


Providence

by scarredsodeep



Series: The Golden Age of Piracy [2]
Category: AFI
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure Violence, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Henry Morgan - Freeform, Historical, Histtorical Fiction, I did so much research for this story I'm still a little in shock, M/M, Pirates, You will learn some pretty accurate things about ships and Captain Morgan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-29
Updated: 2015-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-04 23:12:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 82,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3096092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarredsodeep/pseuds/scarredsodeep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way. Originally published in summer 2011.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, believe your eyes--this is indeed the long-expected sequel to _Honored to be Plundered_! Set in 1665, it is more or less historically accurate (I'll be tweaking a few dates to satisfy my storytelling urges), and--I promise--a smashing good time.

Author's Notes:

Ladies and gentlemen, it is good to be here again!

A few notes about the text: Villa de la Vega is, in 1665, the capital of Santiago, the name for Jamaica when the Spanish held it. Isla de Providencia was a real place, part of a real archipelago, and rumors of the wealth and treasure hidden there abound to this day.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns I'd love to address them. I invite you to join me on this grand adventure, my first foray into historical fiction, my first sequel, and my first adventure fic for this site. (I'm brushing up on my nautical terms, and my Caribbean history. With luck this will be as accurate as possible!)

I don't own any of the characters and only some of these events actually transpired.

  
_Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats._  
—H. L. Mencken

 

 

 

The young pirate pressed his slim body to the mast of his lover’s ship, shivering in the trade winds. The horizon was grey and shrouded in mist. Squinting, he thought he made out another dark shape in the thickening fog. It was hard to tell—after so many days blind at sea, it was too easy to summon dreams into what seemed to be reality.

For a moment, he let himself hope. Maybe, at long last, they drew upon the vessel they were pursuing.

He strained his ears against the muted call of the sea. Listening for the shouts of men, the snap of sails other than their own.

But he heard nothing.

A pair of large hands slipped over his hips to encircle his waist, and Jade leaned back easily into the familiar contours of the captain’s body, feeling goosebumps chase across his skin at the touch. “Any sight of them, eagle eye?” Carson’s voice thrummed in his ear.

Jade closed his eyes, enjoying the coolness of the mist on his windburnt cheeks, the tensile warmth of Carson’s embrace, the way all other thoughts fled his mind when his captain was near. “Not a glimpse,” Jade answered, opening his eyes and straightening as the captain’s hands dropped from his waist. Back to business.

Carson strode past Jade, leaning out over the prow with his telescoping spyglass and providing an unmatched vista of broad shoulders, well-muscled arms, and statuesque backside. Their quarry was a skiff, laden with supplies from the mainland but not large enough to seek open waters. It was headed for the archipelago, the captain and Blackheart had surmised; they had ghosted just outside the port of _Villa de la Vega_ for weeks waiting for such a guide. For once, it was not the ship’s hold they were after: they sailed for legend, for revenge, for riches beyond imagining. They also sailed, in Jade’s private opinion, for certain death.

The captain grunted, collapsing his spyglass and tucking it away in his long coat. “It’s this damned fog,” he said, leaning back against the rail, facing Jade. “We only have the vaguest reckoning of where the islands lie. If this doesn’t clear up in a day or so, we’ll drift out of pursuit entirely.”

“And then it’s only a matter of time til we’re breached on a reef,” Jade contributed helpfully. Doom and gloom and worst case scenarios were not, as a matter of fact, his usual forte, but he had been a merchant, or at least apprenticed to be one, and was ever mindful of cost and gain, cost and gain. He did not figure a way to make this endeavor balance those scales.

Carson’s face split into a grin, and he swept Jade up in his arms once more, spinning them across the deck to music only he could hear. His optimism was infectious, endearing, lending to his aquiline features a certain comeliness Jade could not resist. He allowed himself to be swept along, returning the captain’s silly grin. “ _Isla de Providencia_ ,” Carson breathed in his ear, accent rich and sweet and sounding of home. By all accounts the man had been English himself once, or near enough, but he was fluent enough in Jade’s native tongue to pepper his speech with warm, pitch-perfect phrases nonetheless. “Imagine it, _mi piedra de ijada_ : forts and ruins and untamed nature at war for the same stretch of sand, crawling with the English and jealous of her secrets, all the gold the Spanish left behind, all the treasure Morgan brought along, and all the hidden wealth stashed by seafaring scoundrels years before the archipelago was a piece on the grand game board. She could be ours, _ijada_. We could be kings!”

There was a faraway look in the captain’s eyes, now, and Jade knew him to be lost in reverie. _Piedra de ijada_ was one of his pet names for Jade; the pirate never missed a chance to remind Jade that he shared a name with one of the world’s precious treasures, never missed a chance to draw the comparison—never missed a chance, really, to raise the blood in Jade’s cheeks. He was impossible to reason with when he got like this, Jade thought fondly. Some of what he said about Providencia was true; some of it was little more than rumor and myth. The things he left out, of course, were the pertinent ones: that they didn’t know where, exactly, in the Spanish Main the island lay; that the east, north, and south of the island were rumored to be made unassailable by treacherous reefs, and that if they did not approach from just the right western angle the _Elder Hawk_ would be breached upon them and defenseless; and, most importantly, that an entire English fleet, the lot of the buccaneers Sir Henry Morgan could rally and the weight of the Crown held Providencia quite tightly in their grubby fists.

Almost as if he could read Jade’s pessimistic thoughts—and perhaps he could, Jade thought wryly; the pirate had always exhibited a preternatural disposition towards knowing Jade’s mind—Carson drew him nearer yet, so that Jade could count every scruffy hair on his unshaven chin, every tiny star in his glittering eye. It was always difficult to breathe, when Carson was so close, when their lips had mere inches between them. Jade could feel the tension stretching threadlike, every force of the cosmos drawing his lips to the captain’s inexorably.

“Don’t look so grim,” Carson murmured, the sound of his sun-cracked lips brushing together as audible as his words. “I’ll shower you with jewels, pet. You’ll drip emeralds and rubies like lesser men drip sweat. You’ll like it, I promise.” With each word his voice dropped lower in his throat, turning into a growl that resonated in Jade’s deepest places and weakened his knees; with each words those lips drew tantalizingly closer, til Jade could scarce draw breath, til Jade thought he would burst, til Jade was on the point of seizing the captain roughly by the hair and forcing their mouths to meet.

“Captain!” came the shrill cry, piercing his happiness, breaking the moment into pieces. Without so much as a regretful glance, the captain pulled away, whirling around to peer up at the crow’s nest, grinning as if his first mate had interrupted nothing. He stepped into the air and onto the rigging as if it were solid deck, his shapely form scaling the ropes easily as answered Blackheart’s summons.

Jade forced aside his disappointment. He did not doubt the captain’s affection for him; quite the opposite, in fact. But it was perfectly within his rights to peevish about such interruptions, even if he couldn’t reasonably bring himself to resent having to share Carson’s attentions. He cast his eyes about the deck for some task with which to distract himself from unmet desires. Blackheart would not have called out from the crow’s nest had he not sighted something at last, Jade reminded himself as he set about checking the soundness of salt-crusted knots. The staysail snapped decorously in a welcome gust of cool wind, the forward guard of the afternoon cloudburst that would soon be upon them.

When he had first taken to sea, near five years ago now, the daily tossing of the ship and the tearing of the sky had frightened him; now he looked forward to the way black clouds drew up out of nowhere, the unpredictable whipping of wind that tugged the ship from side to side, the shredding of the horizon by great white bolts of fire and the sound of the rumbling heavens like cannon blasts in his ears. He liked how small it all made him feel, how powerless; he was but a toy in the eyes of gods, tossed to and fro, his life and death of little consequence. To give himself up into the hands of fate, to let everything go and be thrown free—it was not so different from what he loved about the captain, really. In any event, he had grown accustomed to the afternoon squall, as he had grown accustomed to so much else. It would toss the ship and the crew aboard it like playthings and then die out twenty minutes later, the black clouds crawling apart to show a blue sky and hot golden sun, tantrum forgotten.

Not that there had been much sun lately, Jade amended. Ever since they’d begun pursuit, seemed like, fog had hung heavy and the winds had been weak. It was a blessing, really, if Blackheart had caught sight of the skiff; they would all be grateful. Satisfied with this, Jade moved to a tangle in one of the shrouds and set himself to righting it.

 

 

 

It was only by chance, really, that a shape at appeared on the distant horizon; Blackheart Havok knew he would have called out regardless had the captain’s lips drawn any closer to the merchant’s. It was easy to pretend, after all, that the energetic grin on Adam’s face as he hefted himself into the crow’s nest was all for him, and he certainly had not freed himself from the merchant’s grip with any reluctance. Blackheart knew that things passed between them, that there were moments even his shrewd machinations could not interrupt, but he preferred not to dwell on them. He preferred, in fact, to stay high above the ship, swaying with the sails, where he could pretend that the merchant had died on his father’s ship as he was meant to.

“What do you see, Mr. Havok?” the captain rumbled pleasantly, his body near to Blackheart’s by necessity—the crow’s nest was snug for a single man, even one of Blackheart’s slight stature, and when two men occupied it their bodies could not help but touch. Blackheart rarely shouted news down from his perch, even when it was trivial; he preferred the captain to come to him. It spared his fine singing voice, he thought to himself with a smirk.

“Not sure,” Blackheart grunted, not lowering his spyglass. Instead of speaking, he pointed to what he saw—starboard of the mizzenmast, east of their current course, something large hulked through the mist. Too large to be the skiff they were after, and apparently motionless. “What do you make of it?”

Blackheart made to pass his spyglass to the captain, who had already drawn his own from an inner pocket. He peered at the mass only for a moment before snapping his spyglass closed decisively. “Best tell the lads to steer wide of her,” he said with a sort of wistful sigh. “Let’s set down anchor a ways off and send out a galley.” He glanced sideways at Blackheart, reading his puzzlement. “It’s a wreck, of course. Caught on a reef, I’d reckon. We’ll relieve her of her supplies and any informative survivors.”

“A map wouldn’t be amiss,” Blackheart added, squinting out at the behemoth on the horizon again. Its shape was emerging little by little; he could see that the captain must be right, for he didn’t know what else the shadow would be, but Adam’s canny intuition was still a marvel to him, after all these years. Himself, he’d have run the ship aground before recognizing the shadow for a wreck and the dangers it symbolized. “Tell them to be on the lookout for maps.”

The captain clapped a hand to Blackheart’s shoulder. “Tell them yourself,” he said heartily. “I’m sending you.”

Blackheart’s sharp eyes didn’t leave the captain as he scrambled back down the shroud to the deck, where he would gather the rest of the raiding crew and make the necessary course adjustments. The merchant was nowhere to be seen, which brought Blackheart no end of pleasure. How long ago was it now, he wondered? Too long, certainly, but how long was that? Every time his eyes fell on the merchant’s body, flowing but strong, his skin was chilled with memories half ecstatic and half torturous. It was the cruelest joke the fates had ever told, the merchant’s presence on the _Hawk_ , a living, damnably breathing reminder of the pitiful creature he had once been and the night that had changed everything. It was his own fault, Blackheart told himself—his own fault. A year ago, now, or close to it, since they’d sighted the _Valor de España_ and he’d given the captain the go-ahead to board it. Hadn’t he felt a thrill creep upon his flesh? Hadn’t he half-hoped, half-dreaded, the impossible, the inevitable? Hadn’t a part of him, no matter how small, wished with unchecked desperation for it to be Sir Puget’s ship? A thousand scenarios had filled his head, in those days—a thousand chance reunions, some carnal and some cruel, a thousand deaths and indignities for the man that had changed everything. When it had transpired that the boy really was aboard the ship, what had he hoped for then? Perhaps he had thought to claim the merchant as a prize, a pet, his spoils of war. To keep him as a slave, or perhaps a companion. Or had he wanted to see the bright crimson burst of the merchant slashed across the belly, his guts a patch of vibrant slickness on an already slick and sinking deck? Maybe what he had really wanted was to sail away, armed with Puget riches and treated to the soliloquy of the merchant’s dying, drowning screams, vanishing to a black-sailed speck. Maybe he had never wanted to be reunited with the man at all. Dreams weren’t meant to come true. A man should never have to reckon with the things he himself has wished for.

Blackheart turned his eyes again to the horizon, upon which the wreck’s skeleton hulked ever larger. The familiar tones of the captain’s voice caught on the rising wind to reach his ears, a balm for the seemingly endless years of suffering Blackheart had endured, a remedy to cure his each and every aching ill.

 

 

 

The oars dipped into waves with nary a sound, though the roughening crests had begun to toss the little gig haphazardly. Oars were meant for guiding, not wrestling; with a yelp one of the boys in back let his slip, and the sea sucked it away forever. Hunter’s face scrunched in distaste at the misfortune; the galley took on a list that was not altogether ideal. “Row softer, now,” Hunter commanded quietly to the man beside him, the captain’s pretty plaything, Jade. It would be best for Jade to draw his oar up out of the water entirely, now that the boy behind Hunter had lost his, but they’d not reach the wreck before the storm hit with only two oars at work. The man adjusted his rhythm quickly and competently. While it was beyond unusual for the captain to leave a man alive, Hunter was quick to admit that Jade had made a ready addition to the crew. He wasn’t exactly like one of them—not rough but sanded down, as if beaten upon by unceasing waves until his edges were all smooth, refined. Even as the sun baked his rich Spanish skin to a nut-brown and brought out twists of red and gold in his dark hair, even as the labor coarsened his hands and filled out his lithe frame, even as his intelligent, cultured voice grew accustomed to their polyglot assortment of curses and vulgarities, the words seemed wrong in his pink mouth and the oar didn’t fit in his hands. Hunter understood the man had been a sailor, of sorts, on the ship they’d plucked him from, and he certainly didn’t seem to begrudge the captain the murder of every other living soul upon it, but he was a sailor of the sort who gave orders and didn’t receive them, who did the brunt of his work with parchment and ink and was far more accustomed to traipsing lightly across decks than charging bloody onto them.

This was not to say that Hunter was not glad to have Jade beside him. The man was a revelation with a sword; no one would say otherwise. It hadn’t taken him long at all to turn his fencing training to the task of actually bloodying and dismembering opponents, and though he couldn’t be said to relish killing Hunter had seen the joy of blood fall upon him a time or two, though not long after the melee ended his cheeks would be seen to pale, the fire in his eyes to turn to sickly ash. That was fine by Hunter; he didn’t abide by squeamishness, but he didn’t demand his companions to be bloodthirsty either.

Aside from the boy behind him—a pointless creature, really, hired at some nancy English port—it was a solid crew, Hunter reckoned. Blackheart and Jade and himself and ol’ Oarless at their backs would scour the wreck in no time, he knew; ‘less she had a full surviving crew, resistance wouldn’t be an issue.

They pulled up to the reef under the cover of the first thunderclap. “Stay with the boat,” Hunter told John Oarless bluntly. They had hope to tie it up with, true, but best not to take chances with either the boat or the boy. “Keep hold of the rope and keep her ready to move. I’ll see if I can’t find someone on board there to lend you an oar, eh?”

They climbed out of the boat, John for his part looking relieved to be left behind, and waded across the reef, keeping splashing to the minimum. Blackheart pressed close to his back, grip steady on twin pistols, and he could hear Jade a few steps behind. They drew near to the wreck, taking in her sheer size, her beauty. She was a Spanish galleon, barnacled and tangled with reef plants, the bright colors of her watertight finish bleached from Caribbean sun. She was silent enough, groaning as the growing waves shifted her weight; as they rounded the belly of her, they saw the first of the train of floating debris. It floated away from the ship, out to some point beyond Hunter’s vision. Blackheart Havok stopped short at the sight of it, near tripping Jade up.

“Look,” he hissed, pointing in the same direction the wreckage drifted. “The current’s taking it to shore.”

“I don’t see no shore,” Hunter pointed out in a whisper. “Current’s taking it wherever current feels like going.”  
Blackheart scowled. “It’s shore, I can feel it. Land that way. If we can find a way around the reef…” Blackheart’s whisper faded under the sound of the whipping wind. The sky grew blacker by the second, gathering clouds, and the waves sucked dangerously at Hunter’s feet as the first lashes of cold rain began to fall.

“I don’t fancy standing out on a reef while the heavens thrash us,” Jade piped up from behind. “Do you? Let’s move.”

Blackheart made a sound in his throat, guttural but not intelligible, and Hunter took Jade’s cue, slogging on. Each time he lifted his boot the waves threatened to drag him away, flaying him across the reef or maybe dragging him out to the deep to meet his end, which was how he’d always expected to die. Was no man could outswim the current when it had a mind to see him dead, and Hunter stepped carefully, not ashamed of his relief when they drew around the front of the ship and climbed inside her.

She was on a wicked angle, not exactly her side but certainly not upright, making it easy to climb up on her deck but impossible to walk across it. Instead the little crew had the unique pleasure of scrabbling their way up it, rain-slick and heaving, seeking purchase wherever they could find it. Blackheart reached the hatch first and threw it open; the ship lurched nauseously, dislodged a moment and grinding on the reef before she caught again. Blackheart dropped through the hatch, and Jade after him; Hunter dropped last, landing blind and badly, salt water shooting up his nose. Hadn’t expected it to be quite so deep, hadn’t expected the floor to be far below him. He shot to the surface gasping, treading water, trying to locate the others in the dark by their breathing. He could hear another treading water, gulping air as loudly as he was, but no sound of the other. The edge of something large and floating nudged him and he grabbed hold, hands meeting his across the wooden expanse. Sharp nails bit at his skin at he knew it was Blackheart.

It was Jade, then, still fighting in the dark to keep his head above water. “Leg’s stuck,” he managed to gasp wetly, the sounds of his thrashing growing louder, more desperate. Hunter moved to reach toward the sound of his voice but Blackheart held his wrists fast. He didn’t know what the man was about—did he mean to let Jade drown? He wished he could believe that Blackheart’s grip was so firm because he was frightened, panicking in the dark—but of course, a man didn’t earn a name like Blackheart Havok for being dainty and polite. “This way,” Hunter called out. Didn’t know what Blackheart was about, no, but didn’t aspire to accomplice to unwarranted murder. (Some murders, Hunter firmly believed, were very well warranted. Particularly when there was plunder involved, or loose women.)

Blackheart’s hands spasmed around his wrists, drawing blood from the feel of the salt sting, and Jade coughed out a garbled, waterlogged name—“Davey, please!” he choked.

Blackheart’s grasp fell away all at once, and Hunter kicked away from floating object—a table, he reckoned—and in the direction of Jade without hesitation. Hunter caught his reaching hand and tugged, but whatever had snagged Jade’s leg held fast. It was fortune that freed him, more than any effort of Hunter’s; the ship gave a great lurch as a tempest-sized wave pounded into it, and whatever was trapping him shifted. Jade came forward towards Hunter all at once, and Hunter reeled back into the floating bit of debris quite by chance. He pulled both of them onto its surface, Jade swearing consistently under his breath.

“All right?” Hunter asked, spitting out salt water. Jade grunted by way of acquiescence; Hunter guessed his leg had been wrenched pretty good and that the lungful of saltwater hadn’t done him much good, but the man had proved hardier than one would expect a merchant’s son to be, so Hunter didn’t linger on it. Nor did he linger over what Blackheart had and had not done. Blackheart didn’t like the captain’s pet, that much was plain, and moreover none of Burgan’s business. He’d let an enemy die when it was in his power to save him, more times than he could reasonably estimate. Couldn’t say that enemy had ever been a crewmate but, Hunter reckoned, there would be a first time for that too, somewhere down the line. He wasn’t going to be judging anyone anytime soon, was the point.

Brilliant light filled the dark space as a flash of lightning tore open the sky, slashing its light across the open hatch. Blackheart’s voice came from across the cabin where he’d found something else to cling to. “This way, ladies,” he called out, trying to make his sonorous, womanish voice sound gruff. Hunter swam over, boots scraping the slanting floor awkwardly, and slithered through the doorway Blackheart had found.

 

 

 

When the raiding party returned shortly following the conclusion of the afternoon squall, the captain himself hauled half the hopes to hoist the galley aloft. Adam took in the small crew proudly, for among them were his best, most trusted men. His eyes lingered especially on the long coil of Jade’s body, the grace with which he swung himself aboard—the grim look on his usually smiling face, the way he favored his left leg. Adam eyed Jade’s trousers closely, unable to tell if it was mere wet or blood that darkened the cloth. He’d have to ask about that leg later.

After Jade came Mad Hunter, shorn head peeling with constant sunburn and muttering under his breath in the fashion that had earned him his name—that, and his proclivity to sing while he slaughtered. Of the lot, Hunter had sailed with the _Hawk_ the longest. He’d been there when Adam joined up, there when Adam made mate, there when the old captain died of cockrot and Adam took the _Hawk_ for his own. There was no man he’d rather at his back, except for the one who heaved himself out of the galley after—David Havok, first mate and prodigious navigator, preceded in every port in the Spanish Main by the chilling name Blackheart. Among the lot, Adam knew Havok was the only one who could successfully orchestrate a mutiny, the only real threat to his captaincy. The first mate was small but sharp and canny, and men would fall in line behind his dread name.

Lucky, then, thought Adam, that he’d trust Havok with his life. The captain extended a hand to help him mate on board, grinning on them all in such a way that they filled with light, turned to fire and gold under his eye. One couldn’t say that Adam was oblivious, exactly, to the effect his favor had on his men, as if the sun itself shined only for them; but his capricious, easy way of trading and twisting his benevolence and affection seemed second nature to him, as if he wasn’t fully aware of the way his crew lingered and bloomed under his praise. One couldn’t blame him for it—and when the captain shone for one of his men as brightly as if that man were the only other breathing, one wouldn’t wish to.

“What did you bring me, boys?” he roared in high spirits, clapping his hands together. The crew trickled into view behind him, gathering with interest as Havok brought out the spoils.

“A good deal of extra oars, for one,” Havok pronounced with a pointed look at John Jones, heaving an armful of great paddles into the young man’s skinny arms. “Captain’s strongbox, watertight,” he went on, shaking the box so it jingled above his head. The crew murmured their approval, thinking of the gold and jewels responsible for that jingling with eagerness. The captain, shrewder, knew the real treasure the box might hold was a captain’s log, best of all one bearing coordinates.

The men cheered raucously as Havok distributed liberally what spirits they had recovered, likely seeped full of seawater and salt, not that the men minded, and as they jostled one another for access to the bottles they took little notice of Havok, who now held up a scrap of oilskin cloth. “And this,” he concluded softly, black eyes burning into the captain. To the side, Mad Hunter shook his head, muttering blackly, and Jade crossed arms across his chest and frowned. John Jones staged and swayed with the unwieldy weight of the oars. But the captain saw none of this: his eyes were for Havok alone, as if no other man had ever existed. Havok’s eyes twinkled as he basked under Adam’s stare.

“And what’s that, Mr. Havok?” Adam asked, drawing nearer, eyes fixed on the charcoal marks on the bit of cloth.

“A compass heading,” Havok replied primly, tucking the scrap safely away beneath the strap of his baldric, “for Isla de Providencia.”  


End Notes:

Avast, fair readers! Spill yar guts in the box below or ya'll walk the plank!

(I will do my best to update weekly. Wednesday just isn't the same without story deadlines!)

  
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680>  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo ho, cats and kittens! Chapter is two up and running. Look to adventure and danger and unbridled comedy on the horizon! Thank you for taking the time to read and comment, I look forward to hearing what you think! This is the most fun thing I've written in a very long time.

  
[Providence](http://afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680) by [scarredsodeep](http://afislash.com/viewuser.php?uid=389)  


  
Summary: It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.  
Categories: [Jadam](http://afislash.com/browse.php?type=categories&catid=6) Characters:  None  
Genres:  Action, Adventure, Alt. Universe, Romance  
Warnings:  None  
Challenges:  
Series: None  
Chapters:  16 Completed: Yes   
Word count: 80688 Read: 2074  
Published: 04/29/2011 Updated: 08/10/2011 

Chapter 2 by scarredsodeep

Author's Notes:

Yo ho, cats and kittens! Chapter is two up and running. Look to adventure and danger and unbridled comedy on the horizon! Thank you for taking the time to read and comment, I look forward to hearing what you think! This is the most fun thing I've written in a very long time.

I own nothing, and none of this happened!

Late that night in the captain’s cabin, Blackheart staggered as if he were on land to one of the purloined bottles, refilling his now several times emptied cup. There had been an early end to the day’s work and much revelry; the captain had maintained anchor, declaring their little patch of sea good as any to start the work of edging round the reef. It would be arduous and deadlier than most raiding was, but Blackheart and Carson alike had faith if any man could steer them round the reef alive, it was Blackheart Havok.

Blackheart had told the captain all he could a few times, now: about the state of the wrecked galleon, her water-ravaged supplies, so little to salvage. They had found a few bodies in the hold, bloated with seawater, at once preserved and mutilated by the salt. Their grey caked skin was hard to read, but their uniforms had been Spanish of a certainty—the galleon had been part of the armada, best as Blackheart could tell, and it had been some time since she’d sunk. They’d know more about her once the merchant had deciphered the captain’s log. It grated Blackheart that he couldn’t do it himself, but though he wasn’t keen to say so, he’d never learned to read, in fact could barely write out his own name. Compass directions, coordinates, the strange navigator’s shorthand of symbols and scratches, the secrets of maps and charts and stars—these things were, regrettably, the extent of his literacy. He signed his name with an **X**. He did not know if the captain could read—the man had never much bothered with books, and in any case, it wasn’t Spanish he’d have learned, so the point was moot.

Truth be told, Blackheart knew almost nothing of the captain as he had been in the years before he’d stowed away on the _Hawk_. He scrutinized the man now over the rim of his glass, trying to see the truth of those unknown years etched in Carson’s face, the bitter aroma of the liquor stinging his sharp eyes, glittering like beetles’ wings in the warm glow of the blazing silver candelabra.

“Providencia,” the captain was saying dreamily to himself, letting the word and its incumbent pleasures roll over his tongue. He had believed without question Blackheart’s assertion that the ship’s guts were drawn away towards a land mass. It was true that they had no reason but gut feeling and dearest wish to trust it was the archipelago at all, let alone Isla de Providencia¬—or that it was land at all, in fact—but Blackheart had smoothed over that untruth gauzily, fabricating a kind a hint of land on the horizon to match the fervent certainty of his heart. The captain, predisposed to dreaming in his private moments, had not doubted for a moment that it was the island they sought. What else, his face seemed to say, could it be?

“You’ve brought her to me, my Davey,” the captain grinned lazily, made sleepy by drink and staring at Blackheart with open adoration. “And you’ll bring me to her! The jewel in my crown,” he said, and laughed. Blackheart sat very still, tingling at the sound of his true name, spoken by no lips but the captain’s own for their years together, at least until the bastard merchant came aboard.  
Quite without warning, the captain lurched from his seat and caught Blackheart’s hand in his own, unmatched for size and coarseness. He dragged his mate to the windows, drawing aside mildewed curtains and gazing out at the moonlight. The fog had held, glowing eerily white with refracted light, but it seemed to be lifting; it was thinning, to be sure. For the first time in days Blackheart found himself reunited with his stars.

“See that?” Carson asked, breath hot and wet against Blackheart’s cheek. “Damned fog is lifting. It’s a sign, Davey.” Carson squeezed Blackheart’s hand excitedly and then dropped it, pressing both palms to the cool, distorted glass. Windows on a pirate ship, Blackheart thought incredulously, as he often did. What had the _Elder Hawk_ been before she flew the black flag? Traces of her former glory, like these windows, nagged at him from time to time, hinting at the secret past of his captain and his ship.

“The sand is whiter than bone,” Carson murmured, staring out. “The water clear as glass. Green things growing—fruit, if you can imagine. And gold. Oh, yes, gold.” The captain turned to face his mate with a mischievous smile, eyes wrinkling pleasantly in the corners. “We’ll walk that beach together, stamping our names into it with our feet,” Carson declared, the words thrilling Blackheart to his rotted core. “The seashells are finer than any gems you’ve whimpered over in all your life. You’ll braid them into your hair, Davey. When Providence is ours…” the captain sighed. “We’ll never want for anything again.”

“You mean to kill him, don’t you? Sir Morgan?” Blackheart asked, breaking the spell. Even as the words left his lips he cursed himself, for the captain turned from him with a frown and paced away across the cabin. Blackheart hadn’t meant to ask it, didn’t know why he had, what had prompted the words. There had been seashells in his hair, more precious than jewels, woven in by the captain himself, and he had crushed them. He jerked the curtains shut with undue force, blocking out the eerie moonlight with grim satisfaction, the only sort left to him by now.

Carson wheeled round when he reached the door, the far limits of the cabin, and stalked back, eyes dark and jaw set as if it had never stretched into a smile in all the man’s days. He seemed to bring a black cloud with him, rumbling ominously, the air crackling with lightning where he stood. “Of course I mean to kill him,” the captain said gruffly, the fuzzy warmth of drink gone utterly from his voice though he’d taken up his cup again from the table, knuckles white around it. He nursed it with plain distaste.

“Why do you hate him so?” Blackheart asked, voice quiet and wavering despite his best efforts to steady it. If he was asking damning questions, he reasoned glumly, he might as well try and learn something.

The wrong kind of fire entirely flared in the captain’s eyes at Blackheart’s question. “Privateers are scum,” Carson spat. “You know this. Too cowardly to call themselves pirate, preying on ships friendly to their Crown, raping and burning wantonly and knighted for the pleasure—quite frankly, Mr. Havok, they make me sick.”

“It’s just,” Blackheart pressed meekly, abandoning wisdom entirely now, “that it seems they’re on our side, doesn’t it? Doing what we do but getting paid for it besides? It’s a clever man, really, who—”

“Enough!” the captain barked, anger palpable as he froze in his stride, blazing. Both were still in the jagged silence of it until Carson raised a quaking arm and pointed to the cabin doors. “If you wouldn’t mind, Mr. Havok,” the captain said, more quietly, more calmly, but no less frightening or wild for his carefully controlled voice. “I’d like to retire.”

Blackheart left the captain’s quarters both shaken and smug. It wasn’t often he incurred Carson’s wrath and disliked to think his captain was displeased with him. Still, he was indispensible in the coming days, and he felt sure that the captain would wake with not an ember of his anger still glowing, faced with the excitement of the work that lay ahead.

Moreover, the heavy thunk of the captain’s lock sinking home had brought Blackheart no small joy. High spirits thusly spoiled, Carson truly had retired for the night, seeking solitude to brood upon. He would not send for the merchant this night; no tender moments would be shared. Best the captain’s mind not be clouded by lust during their deadly task tomorrow, Blackheart told himself. He had done the captain a favor, a good night’s sleep and a clear mind come sunrise. That was all. There was no other reason he felt pleased.

Still, Blackheart found himself standing above the merchant’s hammock in the black stillness of the night, lips twisted into a sort of smile, or perhaps snarl, that was not human, watching the man sleep. His face was peaceful, his lips parted only slightly, his long fine body at rest. One long-fingered hand dragged back and forth over the floor as the ship and hammock rocked gently. The man slept silently, beautifully, as if he were made of moonlight and marble, nothing living, nothing real. Blackheart’s curved knife hung unsheathed at his side, the hilt biting into his hand as he squeezed it tight enough to lose feeling, breathing silent through his nose, smelling sea and sweat and cinnamon, fighting at once to raise the blade and to keep it lowered, mouth twisted, standing over the helpless merchant, watching him sleep.

 

 

 

There was little to do on the _Hawk_ that morning, once Jade had satisfied his appetite for checking and rechecking the fastness of the sails and knots. The captain’s log, small and compact, was a welcome weight in his pocket. Blackheart Havok and the captain were shut away with their charts and delicate tools, maps of the stars wrought in gold and heavy books that managed to smell both of damp mold and acrid smoke. Jade was happy enough to leave them to it—the fog had cleared at last   
and the sun was welcome on his skin. He found a comfortable niche on the deck where he could sun himself without bothering anyone, pulled out the captain’s log and got to work.

A great bruise where his leg had been trapped the day prior had flowered overnight, purple and sickly. It pained him some but took his weight, so Jade stepped lightly, mindful of it but not much troubled. It was only main, dull in the shin and sharp in the wrenched ankle, and would be quick to heal so long as he did not favor it overmuch. That the captain had not seemed to notice his injury irked him more than the thing itself did, truth be told, and Blackheart’s fool proclamation of land, like to kill them all, was not especially cheering either. Jade had laid awake into the night, later even than the crew’s enjoyment of their night off dragged on, warm-bellied from drink and confident the captain’s call would come any moment; but the dark had grown darker, and he had grown colder, and no summons had come. Were he a man of any less pride he might have crept to the captain’s quarters uninvited, just to be near the man, but to Jade the rules about invitations were clear. If the captain had wanted him, he would have made it known, and that was all there was to it. It was not as if the pirate sent for him every night, but Jade had thought that surely, in all the excitement of the day…

Not wanting to sour the fine morning or the rare treat of a book, even one so dull as a captain’s log, Jade pushed those unfavorable thoughts from his mind and began to read.

The log, in fact, proved a good deal more interesting than he’d imagined. Though the entries were brisk, to the point, and plagued by precise descriptions of weather conditions and navigational gibberish, it offered much inside into the workings of the world at large. Jade had had no news of his former life in ages; the _Hawk_ had made berth at only a few Spanish ports in his time aboard her, and he hadn’t dared disembark at any of them. In truth he could not imagine how land would feel beneath his feet; his father’s law, remanding him to the sea, held fast. He could not forget that he had let his father and the _Valor_ ’s innocent crew die, whether or not it had been in his power to spare them. Surely he could have convinced the pirate to ransom his father—surely he could have tried. But he had not. Instead, he had sworn fealty to his father’s killer. He wondered if, in his last moments of life, Sir Taylor had cast about the cabin, packed with human bodies letting off the stench of mortal terror, searching for his son. Had Sir Taylor mourned him? Had he regretted not listening more closely, not opening the sails and flying at Jade’s first warning? Had he been grateful, relieved to see Jade’s unnatural life at an end? Had he thought of his son at all, Jade wondered nauseously. Had he know he was going to die. Had he known it was his own son that had killed him.

No—Jade would not stand on Spanish soil again, even if it meant never seeing his home or his mother or his brother again. He could send some sort of message easily enough, but what could he say? _Honored mother, treasured brother, I yet live! And have dreamed up a veritable plethora of brand new ways to disgrace the Puget name. I sail now with pirates, murdering and thieving as if I were one of them, and share the bed of the very captain who ended Father’s life as often as he seeks carnal delight!_

No; it was better they think him dead, gone down with the _Valor_ and buried alongside Sir Taylor in a watery grave, bones long since picked clean by curious fish and the wicked beaks of sea birds. It was better, really, that he think of himself that way as well—if Jade Puget had died a loyal son, so that the man he was now could get along with living a more marvelous life than he’d dreamed existed and be troubled by such memories no longer.

In spite of this, Jade felt real joy to learn, from the captain’s meager records, what had been happening in the world while he’d been away. The log was chiefly concerned with the workings of the ship, and detailed the uneventful journey from the mainland to Santiago, full of gaping silences when the captain did not find himself either at sea or preparing for a voyage. There ship had sailed several routes in the area over the few years spanned by the captain’s log, these early entries cursory and terse. The captain’s description of his first voyage to the archipelago mentioned the treachery of the reefs, but no hints on how to avoid them; still, the directions in the entries might be helpful—or, at least, intelligible—to Blackheart.

When the English fleet appeared quite unexpectedly one morning, clogging ports all across the island, cannons aimed, the captain grew more verbose. Jade was shocked right along with him, as engaged as if it were any number of the adventure stories he’d consumed in his youth; he read hungrily the captain’s account of the attack on Providencia. The Spanish were hopelessly unprepared for the attack, as they counted the English as friends, and Henry Morgan’s pirates swept the island ruthlessly, performing unspeakable acts of cruelty and desecration, the descriptions of which brought goosebumps to Jade’s flesh despite the heat of the sun. The people in every fort on the island, slaves and all, had been rounded up and slaughtered; the structures for no good reason had been burned to ash. By the captain’s account, the forts had not been pillaged; their wealth burned along with them. The destruction was absolute, and laid waste to everything.

The captain and what survived of his crew undertook a desperate flight, commandeering one of the few Spanish galleons left seaworthy by the marauding Englishmen and privateers. Their navigator had been killed in the fray, so they sailed blind, letting the high tide carry them out under the cover of nightfall into unfamiliar waters aboard an unfamiliar ship. By some miracle they made it free of the island, the winds favoring them and luck alone steering them away from the reefs. Their departure either went unnoticed or did not warrant pursuit; the men had believed themselves safe, free, escaped with their lives when they had hit the reef.

The bottom of the ship had been torn like bread by the coral. It began taking on water immediately. They had been at sea six days, lost and with only the vaguest reckoning of where the large island of Santiago—and safety—might lay; their supplies had dwindled almost to nothing. It was only by grace of daily rainstorms that they had water to drink, but even the rain held enough salt to make a man ill if he had naught else. The ship had one intact lifeboat, but six days out they could never have rowed to shore. Still, a few tried, braving open sea and rowing out blindly, hoping against hope to reach some manner of land before their lives ran out.

The captain had recorded the Christian names of his crew and the dates of their birth, locked his log away in the strongbox, tears smearing the ink, and shot himself in the head.

Jade closed the little book soberly. His limbs were stiff and crusted with salt from the air and his own sweat, baked on by the beating sun. How much time had passed he did not know. By the height and oppressive heat of the sun, the tightness of fresh-burned skin (no matter how brown it had gotten, the Caribbean sun seemed uniquely poised to scorch Jade’s flesh), he guessed it had been hours. He had read the book cover to cover, taking in every word. He had devoured it utterly, completely absorbed: he ought to ask the captain about books. Everything on the ship seemed to be those damnable charts, but perhaps he could find a proper book or two ashore, the next time the _Hawk_ made berth. Books had been Jade’s life, once—lessons and leatherbound volumes of history and prose, stringed instruments and idle afternoons. A wastrel’s life and a dull one, Jade did not often miss it, but holding a book again had been like traveling to another world.

The log had been more than a tale, however, more than a repository of news, more than a cold reality. The galleon had sailed away from Providencia near a week by the dead captain’s account before running aground—Blackheart was wrong, and this was proof of it. Ghosting along at dangerous proximity to the reef would do them no good. They had given the skiff near a full day’s lead, but with the clear sky, a favorable wind, and the captain’s steps to retrace, they might well pick up the trail again. It would be folly to do as Blackheart proposed.

Jade stood and stretched, wincing at the sickly pain of weight on his bruised leg. It felt like the core of a rotten apple, sweet and soft and nauseating. He had worked up a thirst, and a hunger—it must be nearing lunchtime already. He’d been reading for hours. He worked the stiffness in his sun-baked limbs, enjoying the meager shade the mast’s shadow provided as he walked. Soon they’d loose the sails and again, headed for the shallows and treachery of a reef leading nowhere, if he didn’t stop them. Jade walked even with the shade for as long as his route allowed him, breaking off at the last for the captain’s quarters. Bad news aside, it would be a pleasure to be in Adam’s company, Jade thought happily. In all the fuss of the last few days the captain had not had much time to spend with Jade. It was grim news he’d gleaned from the log and Jade himself would have pitied a man charged to deliver the very message he bore, but he couldn’t help but feel that it was worth bearing, if it would bring him into the pull of the captain’s orbit, into reach of the captain’s glow, for even a moment.

 

 

 

“That’s not possible,” Havok said flatly, eyes boring into Jade, empty of love. His first mate had never taken to his lover despite their common hailing, and the captain quite suspected that that had something to do with it, that the men had met long before the _Hawk_   
sailed in and changed everything. Still, Jade met the navigator’s open dislike with mild nicety at every turn, his affect unceasingly pleasant and his manner always polite—there was unlikely to be a conflict between them, Adam had thought, and therefore hadn’t felt the need to meddle in the tension that strained, now, large enough to fill the entire room.

Again Adam noted the particular set to Jade’s face, the frown that took the place of the easy smile he had grown accustomed to. He remembered the limp he’d noted the previous day, too late to inquire after it, and wondered if Jade frowned because it yet pained him. “I’m sorry, Mr. Blackheart,” Jade said crisply, and in spite of the seriousness of the occasion the captain had to bite back a laugh at the clipped way he said the name. “But the captain of the _Renedion_ logged six days at sea sailing out from Providencia before hitting the reef.”

It was not a particularly pleasant conversation, nor one the captain much wanted to have, which is why he was content to let Havok and Jade carry it out for him. It was hard to choose, exactly, which he would prefer: that they had found Providencia already and navigating the reefs was the only task that remained, or that the bearings in the captain’s log would prove sufficient to bring them safely to the island in no more than six days without ever endangering his ship. Carson was eager, yes—but he was careful too. He wouldn’t risk the _Hawk_ if he didn’t have to.

“I saw land,” Havok spat ferociously, sheets of tangled black hair revealing a sharp meanness to his narrow face that the usual knot, tight at the nape of neck, barely alluded to. “I laid eyes on it! And you think the scribblings of some Spanish deserter, probably sailing in fucking circles and pissing himself for six days straight, bear more weight than that?”

“Of course not,” Jade replied in a measured, even voice, “had you actually seen it.”

Havok’s jaw dropped and the captain barely kept his own mouth from gaping. Jade’s words were a clear challenge, and he hadn’t thought a man on his ship had the stones to challenge Blackheart Havok directly. A small fire of pride flared in his chest for each of them.

Havok rose to his feet, nostrils white with rage, looking like the righteous anger of God himself, mouth opening and closing ineffectually. “I was there, you’ll remember,” Jade went on coolly, voice quiet but not lacking for power. This was quite the display, the captain noted, something stirring within him; there was nothing he wanted more in that moment than to grab the man by the shoulders and kiss him roughly on the mouth. Nothing, that is, save Providencia. He kept his seat.

“I stood on the reef beside you,” Jade was saying. He had been brave and passionate from the moment they’d met, but Adam didn’t think he’d ever seen the man like this. “There was nothing out there, Mr. Blackheart. Not a thing.”

“Perhaps your eyes are less keen than mine—” his Davey bit off viciously, as fierce and fearless as the day Adam had pulled him by the arm out of the ship’s hold. How they’d changed, these men of his. How they hadn’t.

“And perhaps yours were clouded by the storm,” Jade countered smoothly. “There’s no point to squabbling about it. You say one thing, this book says another. The only other word that matters is the captain’s.”

Adam admired the neatness of it, this summation, until both sets of eyes, one black and one the color of whiskey, fell to him. As a captain he did not shy from the burden of responsibility, of making choices and choosing sides, but for the life of him he couldn’t choose between his black-hearted Davey and beautiful Jade. Besides which, the first mate had the authority, was the navigator, and played most heavily to Adam’s wishes, but Jade held a book clasped in his hands, scrawled full with ink and facts.

“Right, then,” he said at length. “We’ll take a galley to the reef, we three,” he decided, though he never much liked the prospect of leaving the _Hawk_ bereft of both captain and mate, “and see what there is to see.”

Adam left Mad Hunter in charge, the man’s solemn nod as he accepted the duty not altogether assuring. “Blackheart’s in error,” Hunter growled under his breath as the captain shook his hand. “Wind told me.” Ah, yes, the wind-talking: that was another way Mad Hunter had earned his name. He claimed the wind whispered things to him, told him what he needed to know even before he needed to know it. Carson didn’t believe him, exactly, but the things Hunter said he heard in the wind had never, to the captain’s memory, been wrong. Carson wasn’t sure where, exactly, Hunter learned the things he did, oft before they ever happened, but he didn’t question the man, only thanked him for his insight, clapped a hand to his shoulder, and swung himself off the edge of the deck and into the lowering galley.

They rowed silently, for the most part; Havok led them back toward the hulking wreck of the _Renedion_ , and Carson was gratified that his men chose not to bicker like children. The promise of clear skies had held, the captain noted; he could see for miles in every direction, endless blue cut with the pure white of refracted sunlight. Adam sat in the back, alternating his strokes. When Havok’s oar dipped, the captain’s pushed against the other side of the boat; when Jade’s went in, the captain switched again. This meant he rowed twice as hard as the other men to keep the boat on course, but he liked the work. He didn’t captain a crew of pirates because he enjoyed a life of luxury. Before long his shoulders and arms were afire with the strain, and the captain rejoiced in it, feeling alive. If he looked back, he could see the _Hawk_ shrinking behind them, looking like a piece of daydream with its beautiful woodwork and bold sails, the windows of his cabin catching the light like diamonds from this distance. The black flag was hoisted, snapping in the wind that rocked the _Hawk_ gently from side to side, tugging at the anchor. If he looked ahead, he saw the backs of his men, striated muscle moving like well-oiled machinery across Jade’s back, Havok’s wiry arms and loose shoulders flowing in time as if the oar was only an extension of them. Carson felt a grin split his face, wide and full of teeth, fierce and proud.

When they reached the wreck, the captain’s body entire was wet from sweat. He laid his oar in the bottom of the galley and dove over the side, cool dark ocean closing over his head. Invigorated, his head broke the surface and he swam around the galley, as at home as a fish, and climbed onto the reef. He grasped the end of Havok’s oar and pulled the galley to the reef, the men stepping out neatly while Adam dripped and grinned. He shook out his hair like a dog, his shirt as close as a second skin, open to the waist. His first mate rolled his eyes, but Jade’s eyes fixed to his body hungrily and Adam grinned the wider.

Havok produced a spyglass and squinted through it, searching the horizon for glimpse of land. Remembering what Hunter had said, the captain shaded his eyes with his hands and stared out, seeing only sea.

“There’s nothing,” Jade said, sounding both self-satisfied and regretful. “I wish there was,” he added more quietly, so quietly that the captain wasn’t sure he was meant to hear. Havok ignored Jade entirely.

Havok persisted as the minutes stretched and the sun beat down. He scanned up and down the horizon, taking stuttering steps in all directions and hissing under his breath. The _Hawk_ had sat idle long enough; Adam itched to return to her, to fill her sails with wind. “Enough, Davey,” he said, voice pitched low and stepping near to his mate’s back. A frown creased Havok’s forehead, but he did not stop searching.

“I know it’s out there,” he said at a whisper. “I can feel it. What does the merchant slut know of the sea? White sand beaches, Captain. I can feel them.”

The captain’s jaw twisted with a frown of his own. This was no longer a productive use of time. They had come to the reef to settle the argument, and the argument, as he saw it, was settled. “Davey—” he began, when a cry pierced the air, shrill on the wind.

The captain whirled, knowing the sound. Even Havok lowered his spyglass and stared to the heavens direct. But it was Jade found it first—shielding his eyes with a hand from the sun’s glare, he pointed at the tiny white body of a wind-tossed gull. “Look there,” he said as if to himself, voice soft with amazement. It seemed to know they spoke of it; the bird threw itself, plunging like a knife through the wind in a perilous dive, twisting to right itself in a flash of feather and skill only as its wingtips skimmed the surface of the sea. It shot back into the sky, wings beating, body tossed by the wind. The gull soared aloft, climbing higher and higher. It shrieked at the sun and flew into it, vanishing from sight.

Havok’s spyglass hung from loose fingers at the man’s waist. A smirk, both smug and disbelieving, perched on his lips. “You see?” he said to Jade, voice mocking. “Land.”

End Notes:

See you Wednesday!

  
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680>  



	3. Providence by scarredsodeep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is at last! I'm sick and grumpy because of it, so read and enjoy and I'll see you next week!

  
[Providence](http://afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680) by [scarredsodeep](http://afislash.com/viewuser.php?uid=389)  


  
Summary: It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.  
Categories: [Jadam](http://afislash.com/browse.php?type=categories&catid=6) Characters:  None  
Genres:  Action, Adventure, Alt. Universe, Romance  
Warnings:  None  
Challenges:  
Series: None  
Chapters:  16 Completed: Yes   
Word count: 80688 Read: 2074  
Published: 04/29/2011 Updated: 08/10/2011 

Chapter 3 by scarredsodeep

Author's Notes:

Here it is at last! I'm sick and grumpy because of it, so read and enjoy and I'll see you next week!

 

 

P.S. Don't own didn't happen!

Hunter hung high above them all, ropes burning against his skin, tossed like a ragdoll in the wind. His hands were clasped together in front of his chest, pressed to his heart, his arms woven through the shroud, knots squeezed in his elbows. His boots were balanced carefully, heels caught on the rigging, his weight supported precisely. He kept the lines of his body loose, his muscles limp, allowing the wind to tug him where it would. Its voice was clearest up here, at the high point of the ship, where he was at its mercy.

He looked out over the plains of blue and black and white, horizon shimmering at the edges. He was at peace, here, ripped by the wind and rocked by the sea; he saw everything. Like the wreck of the _Renedion_ , ringed in blond shallows and black ridges of coral, and the galley bobbing there, secured too loosely, and the flash of white in the sky. He saw these things because the wind wished it; he was the eyes of the wind, and it was the voice of man.

_Not that way_ , it hissed, not so much in his ears as all around him. Its voice was in the way his fine blond hairs stood on end, arms prickling; it was the whistling, whipped past his head; it was the salt sting in his eyes and the taste on his tongue; it was the murmur of his heartbeat. It was the way the shroud and sails snapped, his body a plaything. It was all around him.

_Not that way_ , it insisted again, a gust rocking the ship and dislodging one of his boots. He kicked free for a moment, swinging, supported only by his arms; ropes bit into the flesh there before he found purchase again. It didn’t frighten him, the ease of death, because up here all things were free—not just him, not just the wind. Life was free, up here; so was death. But it wouldn’t take him yet. Not while the wind had him.

“Which way, then?” Hunter muttered. The secrets of the wind were not for him to know, but it favored him, and sometimes told him things no man could know. _North_ , the wind replied. _Fill the sails and go. Now, before they return._

Hunter cast his blue-eyed gaze again at the small brown dot of the galley, looking like driftwood from this distance, from this height. The wind was growing stronger, tugging northward; it would carry the _Hawk_ swift and true. The captain would not regain them. The ship would be Hunter’s and Hunter’s alone.

He frowned, shook his head, clicked his tongue. “You know better than that,” he told the wind, though it whipped his voice to the four corners of the world as carelessly as if he’d never spoken with displeasure.

_Your destiny is NORTH_. The wind was screaming now, whipping clouds across the horizon. “Too early for the storm,” Hunter grunted. “Best watch yourself.” Unheeding—because the wind takes orders from no man alive—the shroud cracked violently, billowing and very nearly throwing Hunter to his demise. Only a stubborn disregard for pain kept his hands clasped, pressed to his chest. Once the gust had passed, he licked his lips and grinned, planting his feet and spreading his arms wide, unsupported.

“Do your worst!” Hunter bellowed into the sky, a few of the crew glancing heavenward to see him there, perilous and laughing. The wind did not reply. Its threats were idle: like a sulking child, it cursed under its breath but dared do him no harm. Cackling, Hunter began his descent.

 

 

 

The _Hawk_ cast anchor at sundown, when there was not enough light left to navigate by. For his part, Jade was surprised they hadn’t run aground already, in the first few hours. This thought was not without bitterness. Blackheart, who usually did not look at him at all, had taken every opportunity to smirk at him with smug hatred as he rushed importantly around the ship, shouting directions and checking his compass and feeling the wind. The wind, at least, was not obedient; it tugged ruthlessly northward, permitting almost no easterly headway. It would be a long voyage to the island that could not be Providencia at this rate, provided any of them lived that long, a contingency which Jade was seriously beginning to doubt. The open scorn of the first mate’s behavior had been worse than the usual denial of his existence, so much so that Jade had sought the shelter of the barracks long before sundown, laying in the damp and the dark, while the ship groaned and swayed and his hammock swung right along with it.

He didn’t understand why Davey hated him so much.

He took great pains to be mild and unobtrusive, to work twice as hard as the other men at any task he was given, to keep careful inventory of supplies and plunder, to be useful, really, in any way he could. He didn’t trouble the captain or the crew unduly, and he had been thought pleasant enough company on his father’s ship and, long ago, in his home port. The thing he and Blackheart had shared—years past, now, and just one night—well, it had ruined his life, hadn’t it? Or seemed to, at least. Certainly it had uprooted him from the life he knew then, and set him on a reeling four-year course to the small-but-steady satisfaction he knew now. What should Blackheart hate him for? He had a dread name and the kind of reputation any half-decent pirate would aspire to; he was the first mate of a fine ship, most trusted friend and advisor of a fine captain. When Jade had laid eyes on him again… Blackheart was not so beautiful now as he had been, when they had been younger, when they had been different men. But he was still beautiful in his own way, the way a sharp-edged blade is beautiful in the firelight, even as it slips into your skin and drinks your blood. At the sight of him, Jade’s heart had quickened. This was the man, after all, he had been banished for. This was the man for whom he had given up everything. And to find him again! In the least expected of all places to see his face, to see a friend!

But that was not so. Blackheart had made it clear, and quickly, that that was not so. Jade still did not know why.

Perhaps that wasn’t entirely true. Many of the men were uneasy around Jade, and he thought he knew why. Though he had sailed, fought, and pillaged beside them for at least a year now, it was clear to him—and to all of them—that he was not really one of the crew. That he was not like them, not really. That he was not a pirate. Maybe it was because he didn’t have a taste for rape, Jade mused idly. Or maybe he did not smile widely enough when he carved fresh red grins into men’s faces, necks, and chests. Did he not line his pockets greedily enough? Did he drink too little, laugh too quietly, tell too few bawdy jokes? Was it the way he spoke? He knew he spoke differently from the other men, an artifact of his other life—

No. Jade knew better than that. It wasn’t any of those things. He didn’t think of himself as one of them, either. It was because he wasn’t a pirate, not really, not in his own right. He was… he was a pet. He was a pretty little pet the captain had spared, stirred by his looks or his courage or the bright drop of blood he had spilled with a stolen sword, when no other dared lift one. He was a survivor—and if there was one thing to be said about Captain Carson, well, it was that he left no survivors. Jade was worse than a pet, then, worse than a plaything, worse than any kidnapped courtesan would have been. He was a show of weakness—of mercy. He was the moment the captain’s hand had wavered. He was the man who had fought, who had spoken his piece, who had won the captain over and stayed his ruthless hand. It was so, so important that the captain’s hand be ruthless. Jade made the men uneasy because the very fact of him, the very breath he drew, that he worked alongside them, sharing their food and their jokes and the affection of their captain, reminded them all that the captain was not quite ruthless. Not entirely.

Jade wondered without feeling any real fear if the captain would kill him, one day, when the uneasy glances had grown to murmurs had grown to open talk and real doubt, if the captain would cut out his lover’s still-beating heart so that he could say _There, you see? Who feels less pity than I?_. He wondered if it would be Davey—Blackheart—who killed him instead. That he would die seemed quite certain, as he lay in his hammock in the dark, hearing dimly the shouts of the men on deck.

The _Hawk_ shuddered suddenly, screaming, as her side grazed something unyielding and sharp. The shock of it jarred Jade from his hammock and he leapt to his feet, cursing, leg giving a little beneath him. He ran towards the port side of the ship, the one the great collision had come from, as if there was something he could do. He ran his hands over her sides, feeling for chinks, for cracks. Of cracks there were some, but the _Hawk_ seemed to hold. This time, Jade told himself. He palmed the cracks in the hull, still resonating with the force of the collision. Perhaps Blackheart would kill him sooner than any of them expected. It was not until he turned away from the damages, thinking to fetch resin to pack the _Hawk_ ’s wounds, that he realized he was not alone.

Mad Hunter stood a few feet from him, arms crossed over his chest, taking his measure. He was a pleasant enough man, Jade thought, until you stood alone with him in the dark, and it was then that you began to realize that there was something not entirely sane to the man’s eyes, that there was a reason they called him mad.

“You had the book,” Hunter said, voice just as measured as his stare. His voice was gruff, gravelly, but no more so than usual. He shouted himself hoarse, up on the shrouds like a madman, on a near-daily basis. To hear the wind, he said. Jade wondered why he had never thought that odd until now. “Why didn’t you stop them?”

Hunter took a step closer and Jade felt menaced. His fondness for personal space, which had gone much to the wayside during his tenure in the rather crude quarters of a pirate ship, reasserted itself quite suddenly. Jade took a step back without exactly meaning to, backing up against the bowed hull and her scars. “Sorry—stop what?” Jade asked, voice higher than he’d have liked it.

“Scrapin’ along reefs, tryin’ to get killed, and you all along with that book, with proof! Blackheart had proof like that, no one would’ve listened to you.” Hunter had not stepped closer. His tone remained even, deadly serious. Jade should have been frightened, should have run for his life, but, he reminded himself, he was here on this ship because he was fearless. He was here on this ship because he was already dead and dead men had nothing to lose. It was this thinking that had saved his life and gotten him onboard the _Hawk_ ; it was this thinking that would save him again.

“There was a sea gull,” Jade said, voice steadier now, lower, like he was a man and not some merchant whelp.  
Hunter rolled his eyes with such exaggeration Jade feared for him—they were like to pop. “A bloody fucking sea gull!” he shouted, stepping closer again. There was nowhere left for Jade to back up, but he wasn’t afraid now. Hunter wouldn’t hurt him, probably. He could almost certainly fight him off if he tried. Jade didn’t swing a sword with the same filthy glee Mad Hunter did, but he was a fine fighter. He’d made the captain bleed.

“We shouldn’t be going east,” Hunter babbled. “North is where the island lies. No land that way, Blackheart’s way, no land we’re wanting. You know, I know, the damn _book_ knows! Why didn’t you tell them? Why didn’t you scream and rage and fight? East, we’ll all be killed!”

A small thing in Jade snapped. “What difference would it have made?” he thundered back, voice the size of Hunter’s and larger still. “I could have thrown a tantrum like a child and still, east we’d sail! I know what my role is here. I know how you think of me! I’m not _fit_ to be one of you. Everyone thinks it. And you—you want _me_ to take on Blackheart?”

Jade’s hands, balled into fists. Jade’s voice a shout. Hunter, for his part, looked taken aback. “But the cap’n would’ve listened to you,” he said, like he believed it.

The rage didn’t drain out of him, exactly—it refined itself into something harder, sharper, that Jade swallowed, for now. Best not to reveal his hand entire; best not show, even to Hunter, the mettle he’d cultivated in the quiet hours aboard the ship. So Jade bit his lip and looked away and showed on his face the real pain the words caused him. “No,” Jade said, eyes slipping away over the hull of the _Hawk_ , finding more fissures and scars, some of which glistened wetly. “He wouldn’t have.”

 

 

 

By nightfall, the captain had had enough and retreated to his cabin, where he laid on his back upon his bed, put off by his own idleness. They were carrying on well enough without him, he supposed after a few hours of drifting from one thought to the next unmolested, and not long after he shut himself away the _Hawk_ ’s negligible progress lurched to a halt as Havok dropped anchor and pulled in the oars. From the silence and stillness of his room, he heard all too clearly the _Hawk_ ’s protests when a foul gust of wind smashed her side into a reef; had Havok known they were so near it, he would not have dropped anchor here. He knew less than he let on, the captain judged grimly. He was less suited to this foolhardy task than either of them wanted to believe. Adam wondered why he was surprised by this: no man could do this thing Havok now attempted. No mortal could navigate the reefs unscathed. Maybe the _Hawk_ would make it to land and maybe she wouldn’t—the fates themselves had more sway over that than any man on board did, no matter how clever a course Havok charted. It would take only one miscalculation, only one hidden shoal, to undo the _Hawk_. Adam had lost a ship before, knew how it went. Without the _Hawk_ and her cannons, they would be lucky to wash up on the shore of Providencia, to say nothing of taking her. Any man without a ship was at the mercy of the land, of life. It was no longer for him to say where he went or what he wanted; he was relegated to letting life happen to him. The captain frowned blackly to think of it, his grounded life, chained to the land—it had been worse than death.  
He’d sooner die than be without a ship again.

The _Hawk_ groaned in the night, startling the captain from his uneasy sleep. The winds were ceaseless, rubbing his ship up against the reef Havok had set them down too near to. Maybe Hunter could call them off, he thought, but then frowned. He was in no mood for jokes. He was in no kind of mood at all, really, considering that they had spent the day inching closer to their fortunes and his vengeance. Shouldn’t a man aimed straight at that which he wanted most in the world be happier?

It was the captain’s log, Hunter’s warning, the resigned way Jade had given up the fight when they saw the white flash of feathers in the sky. It was as if everyone but he and Havok already knew: Providencia was not this way. He’d heard the crew grumbling and attributed it to hangovers, the tiresome work of rowing against the wind, the slow going of passing the impassable reefs—but what if he’d been wrong? What if they grumbled because they knew, every one of them, that this was a fool’s errand? The wind had told Hunter and the wind tried to tell him too, fighting them every step of the way. Even the _Hawk_ now groaned her protest. _They were going the wrong way._

The captain jerked in his sleep, flying up in the same instant he woke. He sat on his own bed, panting, tangled in sweat-soaked sheets. It was utterly black in the cabin. He’d already woken, he thought, until he woke again; he tried to shake off the uneasiness and doubt of the dream. He stumbled from his cabin into the larger room of his quarters, the one with great glass windows and not mere portholes. He jerked the curtains open and stared into the dark sea, too black for him to pick out the hidden menaces of reefs and shallows he knew waited for him. He disliked thinking of the sea of an enemy, hiding tricks and traps; they had ever been partners. They had not quarreled before.

Where was Jade? the captain wondered. Should he not be here, at the side of his captain, offering comfort—making Adam feel like himself again? Strong, confident, in control. Everything a captain should be.

Adam wriggled into trousers, clumsy with sleep, and stuffed his feet in boots. He pulled his long coat on over a bare chest and strode purposefully from his quarters. The barracks the crew slept in were neither silent nor still, filled with wheezing breaths and grating snores and creaking hammocks. The men stirred and twitched, the _Hawk_ groaned; it was hot, the air fetid and still, and it smelled of too many men. Adam must have been spoiled by the solitude and comfort of private quarters—he did not remember the barracks as stifling or as foul in the days he slept there. In all the black uncertainty the captain wondered, for the first time, if it bothered Jade. Surely he had been accustomed to a different life than this, to finer things—to cleanliness, to privacy. He wondered if the men gave him a hard time, down in this hole they shared. Was it an easy thing, being his? He had no idea. He had never thought to ask.

Jade would have adjusted to it by now, Adam told himself, creeping carefully around hammocks. It was his ship and he could make as much noise as he pleased, but the idea of being found down here, of speaking to a member of his crew at this hour on this day, was vile to him. It was another new sensation. Had they been cursed, he allowed himself to wonder? Had Hunter’s wind laid a blight of gnawing doubt on them all, or the captain alone? The decision to sail east had been his, after all. The sooner he found Jade the better—these thoughts had to stop. He had to be himself again.

The captain found him at last, laid out loose and sleeping in a hammock, beautiful as the day they’d met and then some. Looking at him in the dark, smooth and peaceful, Adam wondered if it was the same man at all; he could no longer tell if Jade even wore the same features as the brave merchant’s son he’d so taken to. He remembered the moment in the brig of a sinking ship, seawater swelling around their ankles and Jade’s hands bound, the fire and life in the way the boy had argued, had pledged himself, had kissed. It was not a boy he looked at now. Jade was old and new and ageless, the oldest thing and the youngest thing ever made, imbued with the beauty of the undying, of time itself. For all the dank grimness of his surroundings, the man looked more than mortal, and Adam thought again: why should he sleep here, like this? Did he not deserve some measure of honor, of tribute, beyond this squalor? Why should he not sleep at the captain’s side every night?

It was a trick, the captain decided, of the light. The self-doubt, the sentimentality, the irretrievably old and noble beauty of Jade as he slept—the lot of them, tricks of the light. Come morning, he would feel better. He would forget the strangeness of the night. He hesitated a moment: the mood he was in, the softness at his core. Maybe Jade should be kept away from in at a time like this, not sought after.

But Jade was not a threat to him. Jade was nothing to fear, Adam reminded himself. He touched Jade’s shoulder, bending near, and bade him quietly to wake.

 

 

 

 

The officers’ quarters were not spacious, nor well furnished, nor brightly lit. The moldering feather mattress put off such a stench that the half-rotted chaise, which seemed to squelch with damp each time he rolled over, provided more comfort. There wasn’t a curtain or dressing that wasn’t salt-stained and mangled. Someone had taken a hatchet to the writing desk—he could not recall if it had been him—some time ago; the surface was deeply gouged, nigh unusable. The spindly wooden chair, smelling deeply of rot, was missing a leg.

The windows were smaller here than in the captain’s quarters, the glass thicker and more yellowed. The peeled wallpaper held the malingering reek of cigars and nicotine, remnants of the long-ago officers who had once populated the cramped space. The atmosphere was the worse for the obvious grandiosity the room had once possessed. A few remaining baubles of a chandelier hung from the ceiling, casting refractions on the wall where his guttering lantern caught them.

In spite of all this, it usually served him quite well. More comfortable and with better ventilation than a hammock below deck, though with rather a worse smell; not as at home as he imagined he would feel stretched out in open air, breathing the salt and the sea through his slumber, but fine enough accommodations. Best of all was that when the _Hawk_ settled into sleep he marched off in the direction of his own private quarters—better, separate, greater than. His whole life he had been the lowest, the least. It pleased him no end to stand out from the rabble, from the scoundrels and mercenaries and ne’er-do-wells crewing the _Hawk_. It pleased him no end to lord over them that for once in his life, he had, and they had not.

None of this was any comfort to him tonight. Blackheart stretched on the chaise tangled in a sour-smelling sheet, one leg lifted along the sloping back, the other hanging onto the floor. With his hands he pressed a rancid pillow over his face as if he hoped to suffocate in it. It did no good.

The fucking, Blackheart reflected, was one thing. (Or, often, several things.) Noisy and inconsiderate, yes, but permissible—the captain was only a man. Men apparently had needs, Blackheart was told. But when they were like this—when they spent the night not fucking and sleeping like sensible men but fucking and _talking_ , for hours talking, Blackheart couldn’t bear it. He imagined them whether he wished to or not: naked, perhaps still sweating, entwined—touching hip to hip, back to chest, lips to neck. Stretched out in the captain’s bed like they belonged there, like there was no more natural thing. And the words passing between them, murmurs and low laughter, all of it dripping with affection, with _fondness_. This was a pirate ship and they were goddamn pirates. It was not a love boat, crewed by lovers.  
A particularly rich laugh rippled through the walls, pounding at Blackheart’s eardrums in a way reminiscent of the headboard a few enviable hours past. Blackheart would rather hear the captain access all manner of carnal pleasure than a single laugh as deep and contented as that. He would rather listen to moaning he half fancied he remembered from his regrettable night with the merchant, and half feared he did not, until sunrise, if it spared him this.

Blackheart lifted the pillow from his head in time to hear a low, delighted murmur, ending in a sweet golden laugh of its own, bristling the hairs on the backs of his arms. He threw the pillow against the wall, where it failed to make any sound at all, and leapt purposefully to his feet. He strode across the room and took hold of the cool, sweating handle of his favorite pistol, one tasted his blood whilst wielded clumsily by its first owner. It calmed him, but only a little; he stalked, keeping rhythm with the slow swaying and scraping of the ship—damn that reef—from wall to wall of his cabin, trying to clear his mind. The ivory handle of the pistol slowly warmed from the heat of his damp palm. Another laugh came through the wall, this one lower and more sexual, less forgivable. Not really aware of the action, Blackheart lifted the pistol, closed one eye, and lined up the shot with a knot in the wall, showing through strips of peeled wallpaper, beating like the heart he knew lay behind it. He waited for another sound, just to be sure; didn’t want to hit the captain by mistake.

He swiped his free hand across his chest, surprised at how wet it came away, how much sweat beaded there. His next surprise was how loudly he was breathing—panting, really. The sound filled his ears in the silence of his desperate listening. His arms, he came to realize, were shaking; his pistol rattled in his hand like a drop of water on a drum. He tried again to line up his shot and saw double, vision swimming with red and not staying in place. He closed first one eye, then the other. The world rocked.

He dropped his pistol first to his side and then to the floor, the stained, damp wood absorbing the clatter. His body folded onto the chaise, helpless and weak as an infant, empty of volition. How his head throbbed! Laying it down again was the greatest peace he’d ever known. He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes with a rhythmic determination and focused on slowing his gasping breaths. How his heart pounded! His body shook as if with fever but he found, if he was still, if he focused just on breathing, he could steady himself by increments, by degrees.

He was almost still again, could almost see, when the sound came again. That goddamn laugh. And following it, from the captain, a guttural moan.

Talking was one thing, Blackheart thought miserably, blinking at the swimming ceiling. The fucking he simply could not bear.

End Notes:

Reviews are even better than DayQuil. For serious.

  
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680>  



	4. Providence by scarredsodeep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear friends, let me tell you, this chapter is the funniest thing I have written in ages. You may not read it as such, but the escalating chicanery and ridiculousness of this had me laughing--cackling, even--the entire time I was writing it. So please, enjoy!

  
[Providence](http://afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680) by [scarredsodeep](http://afislash.com/viewuser.php?uid=389)  


  
Summary: It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.  
Categories: [Jadam](http://afislash.com/browse.php?type=categories&catid=6) Characters:  None  
Genres:  Action, Adventure, Alt. Universe, Romance  
Warnings:  None  
Challenges:  
Series: None  
Chapters:  16 Completed: Yes   
Word count: 80688 Read: 2074  
Published: 04/29/2011 Updated: 08/10/2011 

Chapter 4 by scarredsodeep

Author's Notes:

Dear friends, let me tell you, this chapter is the funniest thing I have written in ages. You may not read it as such, but the escalating chicanery and ridiculousness of this had me laughing--cackling, even--the entire time I was writing it. So please, enjoy!

My dedicated translators may have noticed something odd about the nickname "piedra de ijada", in that it doesn't even remotely translate to "jade". However, it is where we got our word for Jade--from this and the Latin, that is--it means "flank stone" because jade was believed to cure diseases of the flank--the groin, the genitals, the kidneys and so on. So it was called 'flank stone' and we liked the sound of 'ijada' and we absconded with it, and now we call it 'jade'. I have done research; I could go on. But for all of our sakes I will not!

I do not own these characters and none of this occurred, but I promise that the events of this chapter will intrigue and entertain! It will also answer the age-old question of how many eyes, exactly, our dear Adam has--keen eyes may have noted that his twinkling blues have been described in the plural but mention has also been made of an eyepatch. The true pirate purpose of eyepatches and more are contained within! (I feel like I'm writing tabloid copy and I'm loving it.) Thanks all for coming--and please, enjoy!

Jade woke on the third morning to Carson’s voice in his ear. “You’ve slept enough, _ijada_ ,” said the captain sweetly. “I have something for you, come and see.”

Jade rolled towards the sound, stretching the full length of his body, a luxury of a proper bed he was quickly growing reacquainted with. Before he ever opened his eyes, he knew the captain was watching him. Jade parted his lashes slowly, giving his body a final writhe under the sheets and yawning widely. When he opened his eyes at last the captain was fully dressed, looking even somewhat groomed, leaning in the doorway with the full light of day spilling in behind him. His eyes glittered with excitement and, deeming Jade awake enough, he crossed the room and grabbed his hand. There was a brief struggle as Jade tried to leverage him back into bed and the captain, laughing, seized him by an arm and a leg and dragged him unceremoniously from the bed.

Jade landed neither on his feet nor with dignity, but even as he tried to cover his laughter with an accusing look, the captain was helping him to his feet and leading him into the next room. All the curtains were thrown open; the high sunlight, too bright to stand, took acclimating to. Jade remembered when they had first met, when he had thought the captain wore an eyepatch to hide some disfiguration. It wasn’t until he’d been some time on the ship that Carson had taken the thing off to reveal another perfect blue eye underneath. Though Carson had explained the utility of keeping one eye dark-adjusted and the other for the light, particularly when one spent so much time ducking between blazing Caribbean daylight and the murky lamplight below deck and didn’t have the patience to stagger about blindly each time, Jade hadn’t thought much of the habit until now. He covered his eyes with his hands, but the captain was behind him, prying his arms away. Jade resisted for the pleasure of the captain’s muscled chest pressing to his bare back.

There had been much of this during their journey eastward—affection and horseplay, any excuse to touch or tumble. It had been three days since Jade had spent a night in his hammock alone. It suited him well; his year on the _Hawk_ had not been sufficient to break him of his fondness for the luxuries so often allotted a wealthy merchant’s son. Jade wasn’t sure what had brought on the captain’s sudden infatuation with him—surely it could not all be an apology for choosing Blackheart’s course, for Jade had rarely been a personage requiring apology—but he could certainly get used to a proper bed, a private set of rooms, someone kind and handsome to share them with.

When the captain at last prevailed in uncovering Jade’s eyes, he found himself marched to an east-facing window. The captain rested his chin in the hollow between Jade’s shoulder and neck and pointed, needlessly, to the horizon. In the distance yet, but broad and flat and unmistakable: it was land.

“Providencia, pet,” Carson said into his ear, lips brushing the lobe. Jade gratified this effort by shivering reflexively at the sensation. “Delivered humbly to you, as promised.” The captain closed his teeth around a tendon in Jade’s shoulder, biting down just past pain, and then flicked his tongue over the indentations. Even as Jade made a small sound in the back of his throat, even as Jade turned into Carson’s chest, even as lips tongue teeth traced his collarbone and his head fell back in the bliss of it—even then he thought it.

Providence? He didn’t think so.

 

 

 

Even with the wind hissing angrily behind him, even with the current fighting his every stroke, even knowing the beach ahead held nothing but disappointment, Hunter was glad to be moving towards it. It had been some time now since he’d stepped onto solid ground, longer still since he’d been truly dry. Wrinkles of damp clumped the skin of his fingers and perpetually sodden boots kept his feet soft and itching—he could only hope that they would camp the night on the beach, a proper fire and proper earth, that he might strip off his clothes, stretch out on the sand, and _dry_. At times he felt a selkie—that if his skin were dry of moisture he would crumble into dust. That he could either be separated from the sea, or live—that so long as he was damp, more fish than man, he was unkillable.

When the longboat bumped land at last, Hunter sprang out into the shallows, splashing eagerly onto the sand. He let other men haul the boat ashore, preoccupied by flinging his arms wide and breathing deep the salt-stung smell of dirt.

As far as he could see, the island was small, mostly beach and rock, the center a dark green tangle of plants and trees. There would be a freshwater source secreted away if they were lucky, he wagered—the deep shadows spoke of lushness beyond rainfall. At a glance he did not note any fruit-bearing plant life, but did not abandon hope. His teeth ached at the very thought of eating something off a tree, fresh and pulpy and living. If no fruit could be found, he decided, he’d eat the leaves themselves, sucking out the green. It had been far too long since he’d eaten anything not stale, salted, or pickled.

Hunter let out a whoop, spinning in a clumsy circle, kicking up a spray of sand. He was not the only one rejoicing. As he collapsed on the beach to roll in the sand he spied the captain jogging across it, not looking exactly happy, but not frowning either.

Once the revelry had died down, Hunter headed an exploration crew of seven men, Jade and John Oarless among them. Carson led a group off down the beach while Blackheart held the landing site and kept his eye on the _Hawk_ where she rocked offshore. Hunter put his back to Blackheart, generally not an advisable tack, and marched his crew straight into the dark, tangled forest.

Even the air was different in the green shadows, cooler and wetter and muggy, but not reeking of sea. It was a relief to the lungs and put the men in fine spirits. Sunlight penetrated the canopy in small, dappled sunbursts. All around them insects whirred, birds screeched, and small wildlife rustled. They climbed over felled trees, slick with moss, crushing the living green carpet flat beneath their boots. When they found bushes and trees weighted with ripe fruit, the men filled armfuls; Hunter indulged in a handful of sharp, sweet berries that bruised bloody if held in a fist. From the way John Oarless ate—like a man starved—Hunter knew he had a long night in the latrines ahead of him. Sooner or later you’d die without the fresh fruit, but too much too fast would kill you even quicker.

Not far from where Hunter judged the center of the island, the terrain grew rocky. In rare heartbeats when the men stopped crashing through the underbrush like stampeding beasts, Hunter thought he could hear a trickle of water carried on the grudging wind. He headed towards that sound, and before long they were faced with a shallow rock pool and a thin stream running off through the forest. It was mostly rainwater, he guessed, though some manner of natural spring might feed it. The men kneeled at the pool and drank greedily—no better than what they had on the ship, rainwater and dirt, but tasting all the cooler and fresher for its source. Half-screened by palm fronds and a hanging sheet of vines, there was a black opening in the rock, a cave. There was something—someone—inside it. Hunter couldn’t say how he knew, but he knew. He drew his cutlass from his belt and motioned to the men to get to their feet, to arm themselves, to be silent. And then he stepped forward, out of the sun and shade of the forest into the black wetness of the cave mouth.

“Who’s there?” Hunter called softly, crouching in the mouth of the cave. There was daylight at his back but it did nothing to illuminate the cave’s interior. The darkness was so complete he found himself doubting a great flaming torch would make much difference, though he wished he’d sent one of the men back to the beach for one anyway. “I know you’re in here.”

It was possible, of course, that Hunter had miscalculated. There was something in the cave, he knew it—but it may well have been a mistake to assume it was someone. A right idiot he would feel, he thought, if he was eaten by a jaguar. But the still, heavy hair in the black space didn’t smell like cat. He moved forward, pressing deeper, cutlass out in front of him. “Who’s there?” he asked again.

The cold lips of a pistol drilled into the back of his skull and Hunter froze. “Don’t move,” a man’s voice came from behind him, at an arm’s length, too far away for Hunter to hit even if he spun and lunged and used the dark to his advantage. If the pistol hadn’t been enough indication, the distance the man kept between them was: he’d been a fighting man before a cave-croucher. Hunter would have to tread lightly.

“I don’t die today, friend,” Hunter said with a smile. “My men are just outside, all of them well-armed, cantankerous pirates. They might not mourn me overmuch but they sure as hell wouldn’t mourn you either, if you follow me.”

The gun was pressed harder into the back of his head, but Hunter could feel the tremors in it. “I want your word I—I won’t be hurt,” the man said. Hunter noticed how weak his voice sounded, how shaky.

“On my oath, then,” Hunter pledged, smirking to himself. Was a desperate man indeed wanted the word of a pirate. “Safe passage. Put up your pistol and think of me as your rescuer.”

Once bustled out of the cave, the man was bound, each wrist to the other at his back and his arms to his sides. His legs were hobbled and a rope fixed around his neck with a hangman’s knot, which slid only one way. Hunter held the other end of the rope and the man stumbled in front of him, prodded in the back by his men’s swords. Hunter, who did not consider any of this breaking his word, stroked his new pistol fondly. It was a fine thing, made by a master and well-cared for, once. It had threatened him and he had stolen it: in this way they respected each other.

His captive was a pitiful wretch, Hunter saw now in the light, as the man limped and staggered and the men taunted him, roaring with laughter. Even John Oarless had drawn his sword to menace the toothless beast. The man was unnatural skinny, skin burnt brown, hair and beard in great black tangles. Little enough remained of his clothing, but Hunter could tell it had been fine, once, each garment a thing of beauty—like the pistol. From the look of him the man had been either shipwrecked or marooned some time ago. Hunter prudently wondered if there would be anyone of a mind to pay ransom.

Jade’s sword, he noted, remained at his belt. He hung back, a sickly look on his face that made Hunter mistrust him. He liked him well enough, but, as he had little enough occasion to be reminded, the merchant’s son was not one of them. No matter how well he played the part, rare moments like these revealed him: whatever else the captain’s pretty little Jade way, he was not cruel, and this singularly unsuited him to the life of a pirate. Hunter himself kept his cutlass sheathed and had little enough taste for blooding a bound and helpless foe, but he had ordered the man bound in the first place and, after all, held the rope. Jade might at least play along if he wanted the others to trust him.

“Haven’t got the stomach for hostage-taking, eh?” Hunter asked him, not content to leave the man skulking at his back with such a look on his face.

“I’ve the stomach for more than you know,” Jade replied evenly with a dead-eyed stare. Hunter was impressed by the delivery. They dressed him up right, he might make a villain yet.

Hunter wagged his eyebrows at Jade, grinning madly. “Don’t worry, kinslayer,” he parried with great amusement. He held Jade unmatched for conversational wit, certainly more interesting to talk to than the mangy lot of buccaneers and mercenaries they sailed with. “I won’t forget your grisly tale.”

The look of nausea returned to Jade’s face at the word ‘kinslayer’. Hunter hadn’t realized that the sinking of his father’s ship ate at the boy. Nothing in his bearing had ever betrayed remorse. He tried to think of something to say that might soothe the barb of his jibe, but found nothing seemed to suit.

He didn’t get a chance to say it anyway. Jade shoved his way roughly through the group of men, snarling at those who protested. Oarless was knocked flat on his arse in the dirt, and Hunter barked with laughter at the sight. One of the bigger men, escaped off a penal ship bound for Australia, looked as though he might start trouble, raising his knife belligerently, but Jade plucked it from his hand before the threat had been concluded as if the man had proffered it meaning to help.

For a moment Hunter thought Jade moved to cut the captive’s throat, but instead he slashed the rope where it dug into the man’s neck. He had sawed through the ropes binding the man’s arms to his sides as well before Briscoe, the former convict, tackled him.

Jade pushed the knife into Briscoe without hesitating, a look on his face that didn’t fit there, vicious and blood as it was. Briscoe rolled off him howling, knife buried in his shoulder to the hilt. It wouldn’t kill him, Hunter could see at once, but he would be in a great deal of pain and next to worthless as a sailor in the weeks it took healing. Sometime in the confusion the captive had begun to run, breaking out of the forest and streaking for the beach. Hunter let him go, knowing that just on the other side of the trees Blackheart’s men were waiting.

Some of the men had lunged after Jade, Oarless and one other bolting off after the captive, the lot of them cursing at the tops of their voices. Jade scrambled to his feet and turned to face the three that rushed him, drawing his sword and baring his teeth like it’d be his pleasure to cut the head off each. Hunter didn’t think the men would kill him, or give him reason for any beheadings, but they were liable to get carried away, so he intervened. Hunter drew the pistol and fixed it for Jade’s forehead, pulling the hammer back with a nicely exaggerated click. The look in Jade’s eyes showed he recognized the bluff, but the gesture wasn’t for him.

“He’ll go to the captain unharmed and bear judgment!” Hunter bellowed, and was more relieved than he cared to admit when the three men fell back reluctantly. “Help Briscoe to camp. Don’t move the knife,” he added. Jade lowered his sword to his side and Hunter grabbed him roughly by the arm, the pistol and his skull drawing a perilous angle between them, though both men were aware the thing might be neither loaded nor functional, and frog-marched him out of the forest and back to the beach.

 

 

 

When the captain returned with news of an abandoned lifeboat a ways down the shore, the beach was in chaos. A great fire had been built but not lit, smoking lightly from abandoned effort, and a camp half-made. Men were running in all directions and shouting at each other, and after exchanging a few glances most of the men from his search party went ahead and joined the fray, fists swinging. Adam’s own shouts for order and explanations were lost in the mire of noise, and he had little choice but to charge across the beach himself into the heart of the mayhem.

At the apex of the tumult was Havok, screaming at the men and gesturing between three parties. One was Jade, scowling and in irons with Hunter’s gun at his head, which Hunter pulled away at intervals to wave wildly at any men who drew too near. The captain did not know when or where Hunter had acquired a pistol, but he seemed to be enjoying having one very much. The weapons of half the crew seemed to be flashing in the sunlight, though only a few had made up their minds on who to threaten with them.

The second party was not one Adam recognized. It was a wild-looking Spaniard, bound hand and foot and with a cut noose draped about his throat like a necklace of dread. If he were put to a guess, Adam would say the boat belonged to him, though by the look of the man it had lain idle on the beach for some time, hidden from view or sheltered from weather in the underbrush at the edge of the forest.

The third party was Briscoe, a large and terrifying crewman, whose front was slopped with bright sticky blood. There seemed to be a knife protruding from his chest, and Adam wondered who had stuck it there and why no one had removed it. He ran the faster, clearing his path with wanton jabs of elbow and sword pommel. By the time he reached Havok a fair number of his men were clutching at guts and ribs and wheezing.

“What,” he shouted into his first mate’s ear, “the bloody hell is happening?”

Havok threw up his arms in exasperation, the look on his face almost comical in its frustration and bewilderedness. “Haven’t any fucking idea!” Havok screamed back, and the captain couldn’t help himself. He started laughing.

The captain doubled over, gasping for air. The whole mess of it—it was just too funny. He couldn’t breathe. Instead of adding to the confusion as his shouts for order had, the sound of his unrestrained laughter seemed to subtract from it. Men who had been squabbling and shouting and breaking into minor skirmishes fell silent and still, turning towards the captain and looking shocked. Silence built all around Adam’s laugh and tears flowed freely down his cheeks until one man in the stillness let a chuckle escape. Mad Hunter whirled on the man, little John Oarless, as the men had taken to calling him, let out a piercing scream, and fired a shot in the air. The explosion of gunpowder and iron sobered the captain considerably, and he straightened on his feet, drawing himself to his full height and snapping the collar of his coat on his shoulders importantly.

“Right then,” he called out in a clear, strong voice. “What’s all fucking this?”

The men, rowdy and bloodthirsty and hollering a moment earlier, now dropped their arms and eyes, mumbling at the sand and trying to escape his notice. Havok, at his side, put on his meanest scowl and advanced on the captive, the likeliest source of all the trouble. He had reached out to seize the man by the jaw when Jade screamed out, “Don’t touch him!” Havok stepped back, temporarily stunned, and it was a new expression for the hard lines of his face. “Stay away from him!” Jade bellowed, and Hunter cuffed his head with the butt of his pistol. Jade slumped into Hunter, knocked momentarily unconscious by the blow. A thin red cut opened above his eyebrow and began trickling blood immediately, so that when his eyes flickered open again he glowered from behind bloody lashes, beautiful and fierce.

“We found this man,” Hunter said with a great air of weariness, “in the forest. He’s been living there.”  
“Why is he bleeding?” the captain asked, well aware of Hunter’s capability to lead him around the pertinent issues for nigh on hours. “Why is he bound? Did he attack Briscoe?”

Hunter looked uncomfortable with the question but answer it, meeting for the most part Adam’s eyes. “Ah, not exactly,” he said. “We tied him when we found him, so he’d not make trouble—”

“And there certainly hasn’t been any of that,” the captain cut him off with a blade-like tongue, raising one eyebrow. “You had seven men with you, did you not?” Hunter nodded rather miserably. “And yet this starving wretched was a sufficient threat that you hogtied him?”

“He had a gun,” Hunter tried hopefully, looking both stubborn and abashed.

Adam trained his gaze on Hunter’s new pistol. “Not for long, I’d wager. Then what?”

“We headed back to the beach, Cap’n,” Hunter said, and Jade struggled suddenly in his grip, thrashing with startling strength and will. “They drove him like a beast!” Jade spat thickly, venomously. “Stabbing him in the back, taunting and shoving him, making him stumble!” Even as Hunter raised the gun to deal another blow, Jade refused to cow, speaking faster and more hatefully. Adam held up a hand to stop Hunter from knocking him out again. This time, he imagined, it would be a rather more substantial blow, and he had not yet heard the whole story.

“I’m sure you didn’t think us a noble company of knights beforehand, little prince,” Havok tossed back, matching Jade’s venom. This time Havok did grab the captive’s jaw, and though Jade fought against his bonds with renewed violence, snarling curses, Hunter and the irons held him fast.

“Enough!” Adam commanded loudly. Jade stopped cursing but continued to struggle, agitated, until Havok released the terrified captive and spat in the sand at his feet. “Will no one tell me why Briscoe is stabbed?”

Briscoe, looking none worse for the wear for the blood running down his chest and the knife in his shoulder, pointed at Jade. “He stabbed me, he did!” Briscoe declared and, many of the men hearing this for the first time, mayhem rippled beneath the surface. Men started muttering balefully and grabbing for weapons. Jade stared back at them all, blazing, challenging each with his eyes as if he feared not death. The captain allowed himself only a moment’s admiration of the indomitable fire in those striking eyes, because assaulting a crewman was a serious charge, and riled as Jade was, Adam didn’t doubt he had done it.

“And had he a reason for this?” the captain thundered at Jade, voice harsher than before so as not to appear biased and also more than a little vexed.

Jade met his stare unflinchingly. He did not look sorry. He looked proud. “He turned on me with his knife so I took it from him, and used it to cut this man’s bonds. Before I had finished he threw himself on me, so I stabbed him.”

He said it all so calmly, so rationally, that Adam couldn’t but gape at him. “And this seemed… reasonable to you?” he managed to ask after a moment or two’s dumb gawping.

“Yes,” said Jade, sneering a little at massive, bloody Briscoe. “It wasn’t a fatal or even crippling strike, Captain, and less than he’d have done to me in my place. It was an appropriate response to his attack on my person, to say nothing of his brutality towards the man from the shipwreck.”

Again Adam was nonplussed. Not that he’d dealt overmuch with them, but damned if Jade didn’t sound like a lawyer. It brought to mind, not altogether comfortably, the very different world Jade had come from, among these men. Worse, of the lot of them, Jade was the only man who’d attacked anyone, and the only man deserving of his current predicament—and Adam included himself in that, he thought wryly for his own benefit. When the captain said nothing, Jade spoke again, voice lower but just as fierce. “I couldn’t let them hurt that man,” he said. “He’s from the Renedion, I’m sure of it, and he’s suffered enough without mistreatment at the hands of men swearing safe passage.”

The blood drained noticeably from Hunter’s face at this. “God almighty, Cap’n, it was only a small oath!” Hunter burst out, exasperated, before Adam had time to so much shoot him a questioning look. “An’ it ain’t like we’re such honorable men, is it? I didn’t see as there was any harm in letting the men enjoy themselves a mite.”

The captain kneaded his brow with one hand. This was all working up to be quite the headache. “For fuck’s sake,” he sighed irritably. “Please, everyone make my job as difficult as possible. Mr. Havok, release the captive and see to his wounds. I’ll want to speak to him. Hunter, get Briscoe’s goddamned knife out of his chest and stitch him up. You there—Oarless—lash Jade to a tree and stand guard until I have time to deal with him. As for the rest of you—food, shelter, camp, do these words resonate in your thick skulls? Get to fucking work!”

For a moment no one moved. Adam took a deep breath, preparing to shout, and the men burst into action around him. In five minutes it was as if there had never been a mob at all, and the crew once again was running like an oiled machine, smoothly enough and for the most part quiet.

Adam looked from where Havok was cleaning the cuts on the castaway’s back to where Oarless marched back and forth between Jade, sullenly slumped against a palm tree. Praise be, the captain thought to himself with a kind of gallows chuckle. Now the real work could begin.

End Notes:

Perfidy and comedy prevail, am I right? Anyway, I'd be much obliged to hear what you think of these latest turns of events!

  
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680>  



	5. Providence by scarredsodeep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am honored to welcome you, lords and ladies, to this latest thrilling installment of our scintillating tale! Within find a goodly dose of adventure and discover what myths are told of the nefarious Captain Carson among other men of the sea!

  
[Providence](http://afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680) by [scarredsodeep](http://afislash.com/viewuser.php?uid=389)  


  
Summary: It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.  
Categories: [Jadam](http://afislash.com/browse.php?type=categories&catid=6) Characters:  None  
Genres:  Action, Adventure, Alt. Universe, Romance  
Warnings:  None  
Challenges:  
Series: None  
Chapters:  16 Completed: Yes   
Word count: 80688 Read: 2074  
Published: 04/29/2011 Updated: 08/10/2011 

Chapter 5 by scarredsodeep

Author's Notes:

I am honored to welcome you, lords and ladies, to this latest thrilling installment of our scintillating tale! Within find a goodly dose of adventure and discover what myths are told of the nefarious Captain Carson among other men of the sea!

I don't own AFI and most of this never happened, save the historical context and events.

It took eight days to navigate back out to open sea, and the _Hawk_ was taking on water by the time they got there. The men worked tirelessly at rowing, tying down and letting fly the sails, wrestling the boom and patching the _Hawk_ ’s seeping sides, sealing off what could be sealed off and running endlessly from deck to bowels, bowels to deck, with bailing pans. The _Hawk_ remained seaworthy, if not quite watertight, in response to their tireless efforts; and, no thanks to Blackheart, they eventually emerged from the deadly tangle of the reefs.

The island, Blackheart had been forced to admit almost as soon as he’d got a good look at it from the deck, was not by any stretch of the imagination Providencia. The merchant and his damned book had been right. At first, the captain had kept the merchant lashed to a palm tree, though he had been fed the same as the others and hostile crewmen had been kept at bay. When they’d come back to the ship, the merchant had spent a day and a night in the brig, but then Blackheart had thrown the _Hawk_ against the first reef and, screaming, she had begun taking on water, and no man could be spared. Even the castaway was put to work—and the merchant had been right about him too, Eduardo Alteza y Cordon, conscript of the Spanish armada, crewman of the bloody fucking _Renedion_ , and with a clear memory of the safest route into Providencia, damn it all. Alteza, though Blackheart could not but hate him utterly, had proved an apt and able sailor.

If Blackheart had hoped the merchant would be returned to the brig when the crisis passed, he was horrified to find that by then he had made amends with the crew and quick-healing Briscoe, become fast friends with Alteza, charmed his way back into the captain’s good graces—if what carried through his cabin wall was any indication—and, armed with the captain’s log and his twice-damned literacy, proved indispensible to plotting their course. This, Blackheart felt strongly, was very much not within the job description for a captain’s whore, but there was no way he could dissuade Carson from heeding the wisdom of the merchant’s book twice.

Everyone aboard the _Hawk_ , save Blackheart, seemed to think the merchant had been penitent enough. Improbably, most of the men seemed to have a sort of newfound respect for him, for the way he had so effectively and ruthlessly neutralized a man of Briscoe’s stature and spared Alteza, who had after all proved so damnably useful, from their own cruelties. To Blackheart, this turn of events was altogether baffling. What had the merchant done but prove he was raving and dangerous and fundamentally different from the rest of them, willing to turn on his own for the sake of some piss-poor castaway? No one else seemed to see it like this, to Blackheart’s unending wonderment. How could he possibly be the only one to recognize the merchant scum for what he was?

“Mr.—ah—Mr. Blackheart?” Alteza’s velvety voice came from beside Blackheart, shattering his contemplative stew. With great effort of will, he unclenched his fist from around the slim brass divider he was so fond of marching across charts. Today, it seemed, he was more interested in driving its needle points into the flesh of his arm. He let the navigational tool clatter on the table top, hoping Alteza hadn’t noticed.

Alteza, however, was well occupied with an almanac and a chart. “There’s a slight course adjustment I’d like to make,” Alteza said innocently, as if Blackheart had merely stood around all day waiting for someone to show up and tell him how to do his job until the filthy castaway had come aboard. “If I remember correctly—and the captain’s log corroborates this—we came up on Providencia with a more easterly bearing. Here—” he said, tracing the pad of his finger across the chart, brow furrowed.

Blackheart could not stand him any longer. “You sunk your ship, didn’t you, Alteza?” he growled. Alteza searched his face for any indication he was joking, frown settling on the man’s golden brow when he realized Blackheart was not. “Why don’t you leave this one to me.”

Alteza got to his feet immediately, face flushed with embarrassment. “Of course, Mr. Blackheart,” he muttered, bowing and scraping and backing out of the room not nearly fast enough. “I’m terribly sorry, I just thought—”

“Out!” Blackheart bellowed, whipping the captain’s log at Alteza’s head. The cabin doors closed behind him just in time; the book bounced harmlessly off them. Blackheart left it where it lay. He could only hope it would be trampled.

 

 

 

Carson had come to see him, the night he spent in the brig. Jade had been huddled in the corner, damp and unhappy, trying to work out if there was any way he could sleep without the slop of filthy water that sloshed across the boards with the movement of the ship interfering with his respiration habit. (Breathing being, he had found, one of those amenities he just couldn’t live without.) It had been pathetic, he knew, but he hadn’t been pitying himself—he had been stewing in anger, in disgust, and, on and off, self-loathing. He had done right in defending Eduardo, and he’d stab Briscoe again in a heartbeat. The way the crew had behaved still made him sick to think of, the fact that no one would have stopped them—not even the captain—had he not been there to make a fuss. But what was really eating at him was that Carson hadn’t pardoned him yet. He had spent two days on the atoll lashed to a tree, and he’d deserved it, knowing the captain couldn’t let him go unpunished, not minding being punished for doing something right. Noble—he’d felt _noble_. What an idiot he was, Jade was thinking in the brig. Thinking he was noble, a reactionary, a revolutionary, standing up for human rights and equality and—and—what, exactly? And what? He still ended up in the brig. It was still four days and three nights as a prisoner, as a pair of hangman’s boots, before necessity forced the captain to let him out. It was then that Jade had begun to feel stupid. Not for what he’d done—never for what he’d done—but for the rest of it, for the choices he’d made, for the love he poured into the captain, for acting as if trysting when it struck Carson’s fancy was all he’d ever wanted in life.

He had wanted to be free. He had wanted to be who he was and love who he wanted, but he’d have done better to sink with his father’s ship than he was doing here. He should have jumped ship at the first port, at the last one. He wasn’t living any manner of life on the _Hawk_. The things Blackheart muttered under his breath when Jade walked by, the things the crew couldn’t but think—they were true, weren’t they? The captain cared for him, yes, when he could be bothered to—as any dog would favor a piece of meat, until something else demanded his attention. The captain would tire of him; Jade tired of himself already. And then what would he be? An odd little whore on a raiding ship, no use to anyone any longer, playing at pirate.

He had been given too much time to think, Jade knew. Without the enforced solitude of the last few days—he half wished Carson hadn’t posted a guard for his protection, as being heckled and beaten by malicious crew members would have fed his anger and kept him numb that much longer—he would never be thinking like this. He would be skipping gaily across the deck, admiring the figure Carson cut in his coat and boots and his captaincy, hoping he was sent for come sundown. Then, for a few hours at least, in the captain’s arms, he’d belong.

It was thick in a stew of thoughts like these that Carson found him. He stepped up to the bars and leaned his forehead against them, looking a mortal man for once, fingers hooked loosely on a crossbar. “I should leave you in here for good,” Carson had said, staring at his own hands and only stealing glances at Jade’s grim figure.

“Because you fancy the way I look in irons?” Jade had snapped back, more bitterly than the captain, _his_ captain, deserved. He knew it but didn’t care. He’d been locked up long enough; the point had been made. If Carson didn’t mean to throw him overboard he should be let out. That he’d been left bound up so long while even sling-armed Briscoe had been put back to work was the real insult here, the real wound he nursed: it wasn’t that he wasn’t necessary to the _Hawk_ , it wasn’t that they didn’t need him, it was that for all the world it seemed they couldn’t have found a use for them if they’d had to—unless of course any man espied a vacancy in his _bed_ , that last thought throbbing with particular rancor.

The captain didn’t respond to his tone, but grinned a bit at his words, somehow only flattered by the leer. Sometimes he looked downright boyish, Jade had observed against his ill will; the high color on his cheeks, the roguish grin, the bright eyes. Even if they’d met in different circumstances, on Jade’s ground, at a market or social function in the world Jade had known, he knew he’d have been quite taken with Carson. There was no way around the attraction he felt for the captain. The simple proximity of the man erased some of Jade’s jagged edges, replacing them with warmth that was heavy but pleasant to bear.

“Because you’ll be the death of me and all my crew if I let you out,” Carson replied, voice both serious and light. The captain paused, and when he spoke again his voice was soft, a touch regretful. “We spend so much time in cages, you and I.” A sigh here. “You’ve surprised me again, _mi piedra_ ,” he went on, the bittersweet quality of his tone enough to bring Jade to his feet, though he hung back in the shadows and did not approach the bars. Clasping hands through the bars of his cell with the man who held the keys—it seemed too much, even for his histrionic sensibilities. “You’ll keep surprising me, I think, long past the day you run out of pleasant surprises. And I will be powerless to stop you, to think ill of you, even when you run one of my men through in defense of a stranger, even when you bring me to my knees, even when you maroon me somewhere and abscond with the _Hawk_ and the last I ever see of you is a black spot on the horizon.” His mouth had twisted into a peculiar smile at the last, and it tugged at his heart. When the captain looked at him, it always seemed he filled the whole of the man’s gaze—but when the captain looked away. When the captain looked away, Jade did not exist at all.

“Is that the same black spot all you pirate types are always pissing yourselves over?” Jade asked, tone marginally more kind, even smiling as he moved a half-step closer to where Carson stood.

The captain looked up at him at last, his eyes half-hidden by an overgrown shock of coarse hair, and looked every bit as melancholy as he sounded. “It’s the one I am,” he said, and then breathed a great sigh that stole the smile off his face.

Just as Jade stepped into the light and up to the bars, forgiving at last, Carson stepped back and the moment was ended. Jade had been too late, too wrapped up in himself. All he’d had to do was reach out, and things might have been different. As it was, the captain was all business again, his first and only love the ship that heaved around them.

“You’ve got to be punished, you know that. I’d like to let you out but the men think I’m mad enough as it is, keeping you on so long and now refusing them the good decent murder of your new friend Eduardo. They’ll say I’ve gone soft, prone to taking in strays.” The captain finished with a smile, a little rueful but not at all directed at Jade, and Jade found himself annoyed all over again. This time not because he was locked up, which only moments ago—the irony did not escape him—had been the case. No, now he resented the idea that Carson would let him out as if his transgression meant nothing, as if he were some kind of delicate pet or mad child that the captain would spare all suffering, even the consequences of his own bad behavior. Things were, Jade had surmised, hopelessly muddled. He had said nothing, wasting another moment, and let the captain trudge up out of the hold, his burdens his own, unlevied.

Watching Carson walk away from him—and later the next day, when the _Hawk_ let out a scream like wood should never make and, for the second time since he’d known him, Carson let him out of the brig while water swelled around their feet and he dove into the chaos of keeping the _Hawk_ afloat—it planted a seed in him. An idea. He began to but did not yet know what it was he’d have to do if he wanted to belong on the _Hawk_ when the allure of tourism wore off, when his novelty to the captain faded, when the umbrella of the captain’s affection was no longer enough to command the grudging respect of the crew.

Stabbing Briscoe in the chest had been a step in the right direction. Jade realized now, boot planted on the gunwale and fingers laced through the rigging, wind and rain on his face and the _Hawk_ charging reckless through the churning sea, what he would have to do. He would have to become a pirate.

Eduardo, who had become an ally of his from the moment he’d cut free the noose, drew alongside him, stepping nimbly on the slick deck. The day’s storm was building up strong, but the wind remained favorable. They were making better time than they had any right to, really—the gains Blackheart was reading from the pole stars and marking on the sea charts was downright unreasonable. When Mad Hunter, shambling down the mizzenmast, laughed madly that the wind was as eager to find Providencia as they, Jade believed him.

Eduardo shuddered and snatched at Jade’s arm as that same wind slammed into them from the port side, bringing with it a wave large enough to wash over the deck, sliding barrels and crewmen. Funny what shipwreck and certain death can do to a man, Jade thought as the skilled and muscular sailor clung to him like a child. Not to be accused of cowardice, Jade had noted that Eduardo was nonetheless one of the last men below deck when the storms hit. In the frenzy of the winds and rain, more men on deck only meant more madness; after so long abroad in the Spanish Main, the men had grown adept at foul-weather sailing, and a deft skeleton crew manned the _Hawk_ through the worst of the tempest. Jade was not a part of this crew, but he generally stayed above deck until he was forcibly retired to the barracks, flitting from man to man and assisting wherever he could, enjoying the feel of the rain pelting his skin and the giddy thrill of powerlessness and freedom—the same thing, he sometimes thought, and at other times disagreed with vehemently—wherever he couldn’t.

At his side, though, Eduardo was gingerly prizing his hands from Jade’s arm and clamping them instead to the rail. Jade took his boot down, however reluctantly; he wouldn’t be tossed whooping into the sea today, nor scampering about the deck and proving to the crew he was fearless, a man in his own right, with or without the captain’s protection. Today, he yelled “It’s getting rough, we should go down!” and Eduardo, looking only a little ashamed, nodded his head with relief in his eyes.

Once below, Jade and Eduardo settled into hammocks, Jade slumped unceremoniously on his side and Eduardo sitting at a soldier’s attention, each facing the other. Around them, men played at dice and cards. Jade stretched like a cat and enjoyed the trickle of warming raindrops down his neck and chest, smiling at Eduardo, the only man who would associate with him in the full eyes of everyone else and simply for the pleasure of it. Not even Hunter, who Jade supposed was a sort of friend, did that. They talked topically, trading news and speculation and history, the gratitude of his rescue never quite ceasing to glow in Uardo’s eyes.

“I think you’re mad to sail for Providencia,” Uardo told him, flicking quick eyes to the roaring men around them, keen not to be heard. “It was hell when the English came. We barely made it out with our lives.”

Jade did not let show how seriously he took this warning, how much he tended to agree. He was the only one who had read the captain’s log from the _Renedion_. It seemed beyond him to make the captain and the mate understand the horrors it contained. They were, generally speaking, unmoved by mortal peril. Still, he did not want to give Eduardo another reason to fear. “What of the treasure, mate?” he asked with a smile of pure greed. “Worth a scuffle to fill our coffers with the fabled troves of Isla de Providencia!”

“There is wealth to be had there, but it’s not in gold, it’s in brilliant beaches and good soil and natural defenses,” Uardo answered somberly. “It’s not the kind of treasure pirates can carry off—it’s the kind for a man and his wife to settle into, to reap a rich life and raise children.” The Spaniard trailed off, thinking. Then he turned to Jade, his eyes bright again, clear of doom. “Come away with me,” he said, cheeks flushing with excitement. “We’ll desert at the next suitable port. You can join up with the Spanish fleet and we’ll seek our fortunes the honest way, or die heroes.”

Jade was shaking his head, numbed by the horror of it, almost as soon as the words parted Eduardo’s lips. Seeing this, seeing the look on his face, Eduardo broke off from the sweeping adventure story he was selling, clearly puzzled. “You’re not like these men, Jade,” Uardo said with no small urgency, as if Jade would have trouble believing it. “There is more for you than banishment to the seas. You might find a woman and a plot of land, if the soldier’s life doesn’t suit you. You needn’t live in the shadow of the gallows! I will testify that you were a captive on this ship, a good man, a freer of prisoners—”

“Uardo,” Jade interrupted, gently as he could through gritted teeth. “Do you think—do you think that the only reason I’m here is because no one has shown me where the door is?”

“I don’t _know_ why you’re still here,” Eduardo replied, face so serious Jade realized he wouldn’t be backing down. “That’s what I’m saying to you.”

Jade sighed and flopped back on the hammock, tangling his fingers in his wet hair. Eduardo still sat primly, at attention. It wasn’t his fault—there was no way he could know, or even imagine, that the only thing that sounded worse than a wife was a piece of land to be chained to. He had spent most of his time upon the _Valor_ alternating between pining for his old life and falling in love with the sea; when the _Hawk_ had taken his father’s ship, he hadn’t hesitated, first to fight for his life, and then to carve out a new one from his father’s tomb. He was ruined for land, now, and honest work, and marriage. He might yet make a fair soldier King Felipe’s armada, but why should he fight for a mainland he’d set foot on but once, a king he’d never even seen? It seemed a foolish thing to die for, that, when he felt not a stirring of patriotism or loyalty to the crown, when his only real allegiance was to the sea herself.

“Eduardo Alteza y Cordon, you are a fine and noble man,” Jade said at length, drawing out Eduardo’s full name richly. “I would be honored to live and die beside you, but my place is here, on the _Hawk_. I won’t leave it.”

Eduardo frowned at this, but didn’t protest. Both men were silent as the captain stalked by, barking at the gamblers as he went rushing for the deck. Carson shot a black scowl at Jade and Eduardo, though Jade couldn’t tell if it was a magnanimous scowl, distributed evenly throughout a foul mood, or if it was a particular dislike for his friendship with Eduardo. He wondered for a pleasant moment if the captain was jealous of the time they spent together, he and the Spaniard.

Eduardo sighed when Carson had passed, following Jade’s example and at last relaxing, crossing his legs and laying back in the hammock, bracing his head on folded arms. The _Hawk_ was tossed in the howling wind and wet indeed, but it was nice enough in the barracks, bright by the greasy light of whale oil lamps and warm by the dense, barrel-chested bodies of the crew. “I suppose he’s a good man, at least, for a pirate,” Uardo conceded.

Jade’s ears pricked up. “How do you mean?” he asked, propping himself up on an elbow.

Uardo did the same, looking surprised. “Haven’t you heard the stories?” he asked, incredulous.

“The ones about the black heart of the first mate and the captain who kills only those he must but drowns the rest screaming, locked in the cabins? Aye,” Jade replied with an unpleasant laugh, thinking of his father, of himself, of no survivors.

“Not those,” Eduardo said, shaking his head and looking more incredulous by the minute. “You sail for Providencia, for Sir Morgan, for certain death, and haven’t bothered to ask why?”

“Not my place to ask questions,” Jade said defensively, but the words were lost on Eduardo, who was sitting up again, blocking out the scope of his story with his widespread hands, looking reverent.

“Some say Captain Carson was born on a ship sailed from the mouth of hell, at midnight, during an eclipse, in a raging squall. The ship was dashed upon the rocks but Carson, newborn, clung to debris and washed ashore in a smuggler’s cove after weeks at sea, not starving or weak but strong, like a man already. They say he was raised as apprentice to the pirate Death, and given his first ship to settle a blood debt Death owed him. Surely you don’t believe all _that_?” Eduardo paused long enough for Jade to roll his eyes, having heard all manner of raving sea myth in his time aboard the _Hawk_ , a goodly amount of it from Mad Hunter.

“But pirates aren’t born, friend. They’re made,” Eduardo continued dramatically. “Carson was a normal enough man, Irish and English both, with a wife and a daughter and a son and a house in a quiet little settlement not far off the coast of England. He was a fisherman, then, quite taken with the sea, and he had a little skiff of his own. When he was out one day with his men, chasing a school of the biggest bloody dace you’ve ever seen, a big bastard of a ship flying the English colors made berth. Out of it spilled Henry Morgan’s army of privateers; they swept the town, burning and killing, raping the women, killing the weak, and capturing the children to sell as slaves. Usual buccaneer shenanigans,” Uardo said, a look on his face like he couldn’t imagine anything so vile, and Jade felt his stomach turn a little. The _Hawk_ wasn’t sophisticated enough an operation for that kind of work; they preyed on other ships only, sinking most but capturing and selling those that surrendered without too much a fight—they sold the goods, the crew, the ship, all to the highest bidder with the fewest questions. It wasn’t, he had to admit, much better.

“Well, when Carson returned, his wife was dead and his children taken, his home burning. He turned around, he did, not even unloading the dace he’d hauled in that day, just dumping the dead fish back into the sea to rot in the sun, and sailed his ship to the closest port, where he enlisted himself and his little skiff in the navy. His boat was absorbed gratefully by the English traders who worked tirelessly to supply their far-flung navy, and he was conscripted to a ship called the _Starswept_. She was a beautiful ship, one of the finest in the English navy at that time, with twenty-four cannons a side. He was a fine enough soldier until the day they sailed up on Henry Morgan sacking a little islet town they’d been headed to for supplies. He recognized the ship as the one he’d seen sailing away with his children on board, his home burnt to smoking ashes—but he was told they wouldn’t be attacking, as Morgan was one of England’s own men, their best line of defense against we Spanish fiends, with whom England was not and is not at war.”

Jade didn’t know what of this story was truth and what of it fancy, but he was utterly rapt. He hadn’t known there were tales like this about the captain; none were spoken on this ship, not even by Hunter. Eduardo went on: “So he hired a crew at the disreputable port they resupplied at instead, and led them aboard the _Starswept_ while the good men of England slept. They murdered half and cast overboard the living and the dead, and sailed for Henry Morgan direct. They were hopelessly unmatched, even with the cannons, because Carson’s hired men were not soldiers and Morgan’s crew were highly skilled buccaneers. Morgan captured the _Starswept_ and left Carson behind on what was left of the islet and sailed away—it’s still his flagship, you know. He was commended by the Queen for recapturing it. And that’s when Carson became a pirate, hellbent on vengeance and half-mad with grief, ready and willing to murder every single soul that stands between he and Morgan. They say he can’t be killed, your Carson, til Morgan is—they say he made a deal with the Devil to make him immortal til he cuts Morgan’s throat.” Eduardo shrugged and turned to Jade grinning, storyteller’s mysticism dropping away abruptly. “Can’t believe you hadn’t heard that one,” he said amiably. “Used to tell it to all the new recruits, scare them proper of pirates. No matter how good a man he was, he’s still a scourge, you know,” Uardo added, “and for all else that’s going on in these waters, neither England or Spain is too particular about who kills him, as long as someone does.”

But Jade’s ears were ringing with the story he’d heard, with the tale of Carson’s wife and children and noble intentions, a story he’d liked to have heard from the man himself, a story he was surprised no one on the ship seemed to know. Pirates weren’t born, Eduardo had said; they were made. And damn if that didn’t give Jade all kinds of ideas.

End Notes:

Whether you enjoy this or not, I would love your feedback! This is a new style of story for me and I'd like to know how I'm doing. Thank you all for reading!

Coming up next: land ho, and murder! Stay tuned!

  
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680>  



	6. Providence by scarredsodeep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh readers of mine, how I’ve missed you! There are two things I’d like to talk about today, so first let me disclaim the boys and defame the plot. Much of this occurred in history, but almost as much is fabricated.

  
[Providence](http://afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680) by [scarredsodeep](http://afislash.com/viewuser.php?uid=389)  


  
Summary: It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.  
Categories: [Jadam](http://afislash.com/browse.php?type=categories&catid=6) Characters:  None  
Genres:  Action, Adventure, Alt. Universe, Romance  
Warnings:  None  
Challenges:  
Series: None  
Chapters:  16 Completed: Yes   
Word count: 80688 Read: 2074  
Published: 04/29/2011 Updated: 08/10/2011 

Chapter 6 by scarredsodeep

Author's Notes:

Oh readers of mine, how I’ve missed you! There are two things I’d like to talk about today, so first let me disclaim the boys and defame the plot. Much of this occurred in history, but almost as much is fabricated.

Briskly moving onward! I wanted to take a minute to thank you all for reading and being with me step-by-step like this. It’s an amazingly exciting thing, as a writer, to get feedback down to the minute on what you think of each part of the story. Your thoughts and comments shape, and change, the story so much! You give me new insights to my own characters and plots and make me think about things in new ways, sometimes changing the story entirely. Seeing how you interact with them certainly helps me get to know the characters and shapes a lot of who they end up being in the following pages. So thank you a thousand times for reading, and a thousand more thanks to those who take the time to share their thoughts with me! The perspective and community you all give me is the number one reason I’m still writing slash.

The other thing is, there turned out to be a bit of gore in this chapter. I don’t think it’s extreme, but the story does go on to contain a bit more violence and gore than I had imagined it would from the outset—sometimes it just writes itself—so please, let me know if at any point you feel this story needs a gore (or any other) warning. I don’t think it does, but I am a bad judge of my own work, so I’m enlisting you all to lend a hand.

Enough of me, then. On to the show!

“Land ho!” Hunter bellowed down from where he clung to the mast, too excited these past few days to keep his feet on the ground. Indeed, on the horizon was more than a smudge of land this time; at first he’d taken it to be some distant spot of bad weather, but the closer they drew to it, the more clearly it formed from the clouds: mountains. Mountains and beaches and something like civilization, covered in palms and vegetation, terraces for crops and proper docks and forts for defense and a market, a populace, a beautiful thing even from this distance. They dared not sail too near, though Hunter sorely wished to see the white beach and green trees and great mountains for himself. Docked in the bay were two ships, far more perilous than the reefs that soon enough would trouble them again. They looked like toy things at this distance but were, Hunter knew, huge enough and deadly to them if they were spotted.

Hunter, however, had a plan, which he scrambled down the shroud to share with the captain. If what the Spaniard said was true, only the main fort, the one in a nice, naturally defended cove that lent itself to military design, had been standing when he’d left. The ships they saw now meant the island was still occupied, and Hunter wagered it would be that one remaining fort where the invading force had amassed. They’d have chosen it, he felt sure, for its strengths as a naval base—that meant either no reefs, or navigable ones. So if they approached the island from the side, hid themselves behind the bluffs that sheltered the cove, they could draw near indeed unspotted.

The tactic was a good one, and the captain enacted it immediately upon hearing Hunter’s report. The wind sang smugly in his ears, the atmospheric equivalent of _I told you so_ , and it was a far sight sweeter than the thrashing and screaming he’d been subjected from the moment they turned off course for Blackheart’s foolish atoll. They were lucky, Hunter held privately, that there had been land there at all. Blackheart was a man with good hunches, but hunches are rarely enough when you’re trying to survive on the open sea—when you’re trying to keep a crew alive and not just chase your own shortsighted whims.

Blackheart was a man Hunter respected, but it was respect born of fear. To be sure, Hunter admired his abilities as a navigator, but given enough time, it was a job most any man could learn to do—even John Oarless. And it was useful, betimes, to have a black-hearted man who felt no remorse and feasted on suffering numbered among the crew—but it also had the propensity to turn Hunter’s stomach, the look on Blackheart’s face in the middle of a fray. It wasn’t joy, wasn’t competence, was just pure evil. So Mad Hunter, who did not fear death, feared Blackheart Havok and the things that he’d done, the things he would yet do. The wind wouldn’t say what they were, exactly, but it tugged anxious at his heart all the same. Blackheart was not to be trusted.

As if he could read Hunter’s thoughts, Blackheart spat on the deck and fixed Hunter with his worst stare, the calculating one, the one that saw meat and bone but not man, not life, the one that made you feel like he’d kill you the moment he got bored with the spectacle of a sack of muscles and blood walking around. Hunter stroked his thumb over the smooth ivory grip of his new pistol, and the wind’s whisper thrummed in him. _Not yet_ , it hissed. _But soon._

“What say you, Hunter?” the captain asked, eyes bright with excitement like a child’s. It was clear some proposition had been made. “Are you the man for the job?”

“Aye, Cap’n,” Hunter assented, words born of a deep rumble in his chest. For all he knew he’d just agreed to dress up as a lady and smuggle the crew ashore beneath his skirts. Better that than telling the captain that he simply hadn’t been listening.

“Jade, I think, will be a valuable right hand in the event of any trouble. The men seem to have taken to him rather well since he’s begun attacking them, haven’t they?” the captain was saying. Hunter nodded with a small smile, as it was true. The whelp had caused him naught but trouble on the atoll, maybe, and all that prisoner business still made his ire rise, but it was true that the men had been won over by the threat of being cut down where they stood. He’d not mind being backed by Jade on whatever venture he had just agreed to.

“Right, then, it’s settled. Mr. Havok and I will row for shore come dawn. Mr. Burgan—the _Hawk_ is yours.”

 

 

 

The captain had bade him to sleep as well as he could, as they’d be up and rowing an hour before sunrise, storming Providencia with two unarmed men and a galley. With two ships in the harbor and the perilous approach to the port, Carson thought it unwise to sail into plain sight in a pirate ship. They’d row to shore, they two, pretending to be shipwrecked not far out from the island but well lost—indentured crew of a slave galley, Carson mentioned, or greedy merchants seeking to shorten their trade route. Blackheart didn’t think either sounded plausible—they’d not pass for merchants or thralls. They could play at nothing. They were pirates. The captain, for one, had too commanding a bearing, and Blackheart too sinister; but Blackheart didn’t think they’d be asked too many questions. The real thing to worry about was that they’d be shot on sight.

The point of the mission was unclear to Blackheart. The captain hoped to gather information, maybe, sniff out a different approach to the island or where, exactly, her great wealth might be secreted. No, if Blackheart was in charge, he’d sail up alongside the first ship silently, by night, and board her without a sound. They’d silence the night watchmen easily, and cut the throats of the sleeping crew with no one the wiser. They’d take the second ship with the cannons and then, when the port was defenseless, they’d storm Providencia. The waters in the cove were too shallow, he could tell, for the Hawk to make berth without beaching herself, and it was a good defense, keeping the fort out of cannon-range. But they could overwhelm the beach just as well in longboats. The confusion, once they blew up the second ship, would be utter. No rescue would come. The people would fall, one after another, in a bloody slick at his feet. He would laugh as he cut them down. His heart would be light. He’d be free.

But the captain wasn’t interested in this plan. Blackheart had only just broached the subject when Mad Hunter bounded down the mast with his idiotic proposal of stealth (smaking of a conspicuous lack of bloodshed), and the captain had happily bogged the _Hawk_ down in tricky rocks and reefs, assuring she would not be moving anywhere quickly. They, the command structure of the entire ship, would row ashore unarmed and without support, and do—what? A bloodless coup seemed neither Carson’s style nor likely to succeed, and if he hoped to find and assassinate Sir Morgan, he was crazier than any of them had suspected. The captain had not come right out and said it, but Blackheart had the sinking suspicion that there was not going to be any killing at all. He shuddered at the thought.

Why on earth did it seem prudent to leave the ship in the hands of a madman and a merchant whore if they weren’t even going to be _killing_ anyone?

Meant to be sleeping but unable to quell his nerves, even for a moment, Blackheart prowled the deck. It was empty of men, for the most part—two of the guard were asleep at their posts and he expected the same of the third, until he prowled up to the helm and found Alteza there, leaning against the wheel but alert.

Alteza looked up at him, face weary but empty of fear. Blackheart didn’t like that one bit—hadn’t he thrown a book at this man’s head not one week ago? Was it not dark and silent on the deck—were they not alone? Only a fool wouldn’t fear him then. The idea came upon him to frighten the soldier, to impress upon him that on this ship, if he had any care for his life he would be shaking in his boots absolutely at all times. If nothing else, the satisfaction of it would help Blackheart sleep.

“Evening, Mr. Blackheart,” Alteza greeted him civilly in a way that made Blackheart’s temper flare up red. “Come to relieve me?” Blackheart wrestled with the urge to backhand the man across the face, brusing the fine cheekbones that had been revealed when he shaved and trimmed his wild beard into a small dark goatee of the Spanish style.

Alteza laughed, and Blackheart found himself quite unable to speak. The man’s eyes skittered with moonlight like black diamonds. “Didn’t think so. What do you suppose, Mr. Blackheart? Last time I set foot on Providencia I was lucky to escape with my life—luckier by far than any of the other men I made that escape with. But part of me is sorely tempted to debark here nonetheless, live or die, just to get off this damned ship.”

Something prickled down Blackheart’s spine, like a lightning bolt that slithered. This gave him an idea, an idea black enough for his name, and it was terribly seductive. Alteza’s teeth shone as blood on a knife might, caught by the ghost light of the moon. He really was, Blackheart thought to himself, heart lurching dizzily, too beautiful to live…

“Have you spoken of this to anyone?” Blackheart asked, voice husky, hands trembling with excitement.

Alteza didn’t seem to notice anything strange about Blackheart’s voice. “Only to Jade,” he said, staring out at the black sea wistfully, exposing a fine golden throat. “I thought he might come away with me. He’s better than all this.” Blackheart’s black heart quickened—oh that was better, that was better than his wildest dreams, if the Spaniard would go and take the captain’s pet with him. Better than all this indeed!

“No offense, of course,” Alteza continued, jewel-black eyes fixing on Blackheart, small smile on his shapely lips, all the more beautiful for the proximity of his death. “I’m sure pirating is all well and good if you’re a pirate. But I’m not one, and I feel—I feel like we non-pirating types haven’t got long to live on a ship like this. I feel like he’s lived too long already, and much longer will see him dead.” Alteza sighed, the sad sound of a truly good man foiled in his attempt to save another. Just hearing it made Blackheart tipsy, it was so delicious. “He won’t come, though. Maybe I can yet convince him, but something seems to tie him here, to this ship.”

Though Blackheart would have deified any man who lured the merchant away, this news elated him: Alteza served no purpose. They had found Providencia and he would not take the merchant away—what did they need him for, some noble liability? If the captain had a lick of sense he’d have thrown the man overboard as soon as Providencia appeared on the horizon. The captain, however, was rather preoccupied having other things licked, and if he’d made an oversight—Blackheart would be doing him a favor, really, to correct it.

Blackheart had drawn upon the man without really realizing it. Alteza looked up at him, brow creased in the first sign of concern. “It’s because he’s fucking the captain,” Blackheart said, voice gravelly with excitement. He was breathing hard, like a dog almost, panting. Alteza’s pretty face registered the first sign of alarm. Blackheart seized the man’s chin before he could fight it and kissed him deeply, ravenously, feeding at the Spaniard’s mouth as if it alone would sustain him. The Spaniard did not go along even for a moment, fighting from the start, and Blackheart would have laughed if he could bear to pull away. Good—let him fight—Blackheart liked that even better. Alteza thrashed, pinned against the wheel, trying to claw at Blackheart and shove him away, but the man was still weak from his long exile and Blackheart caught up his wrists easily, pinning them against his chest, and kissed hard. Alteza bit down on his tongue viciously, as if he meant to tear it out and Blackheart broke the kiss, spitting blood and cackling. Alteza’s eyes now wide with fear, he thrashed and would have screamed, but Blackheart bludgeoned the side of his head with a fist, cutting the sound short into a whimper. Alteza kicked out his legs and Blackheart was off balance, lips bubbling still with blood from his tongue, and Alteza aimed a solid kick for his groin and made to run.

He did not get far. Blackheart was on him again in an instant, long fingers snaking through his hair and lifting back his head, dragging his curved knife across that pretty throat even as a shout rose up it. Alteza’s blood sprayed freely in a crimson arc, soaking the deck and Blackheart as he caught the man’s falling body, wound spurting. Alteza’s eyes rolled in his last moment of life, too shocked to express any feeling, and Blackheart kissed him again as the thrashing petered into twitching, not pulling away until the body was still.

Blackheart hefted the Spaniard’s body, light with starvation but still unwieldy for a man his size, and rolled it over the rail. It sank soundless through the air and hit the water with a small white splash, limp, and disappeared. Blackheart grinned a bloody grin in the moonlight, feeling loose, feeling good. He’d sleep well tonight after all.

 

 

 

“And gold,” he murmured into Jade’s forehead, soaking in the way it felt, his lips brushing that skin, basking in it, storing it. He’d need all his strength for what was to come. “I’ll also bring you gold. Armfuls of it, more than you can carry.”

Jade laughed, pushing him away, not understanding what Adam was preparing himself for. He propped himself up on an elbow, sheet tangled at his waist, bared white-gold skin far more precious than anything Adam could promise. Adam swayed toward Jade as if hypnotized, trying to rise, to place his lips against the other man’s skin, but Jade pinned him down with a hand on his chest, looking coy and happy and affecting an exaggerated pout. “Not good enough,” Jade declared, and the corner of his mouth kept curling into a smile despite his efforts to pout. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

Playing along, Adam ticked off promises on his fingers. “Rubies, emeralds, pearls, gold—what else shall I pledge to you, _ijada_? My still-beating heart?” Even though it was a game, Adam felt something jolt inside him at the last. His _heart_? What had possibly compelled him to say that? He didn’t want Jade getting ideas. _He_ didn’t want ideas. Best to leave hearts out entirely, he’d found, when bodies did the job just as well, maybe better. A captain couldn’t afford to love anything but his ship, and Adam never had, never would. He was more tired than he’d thought, clearly, with words like that slipping out.

Jade, who had visibily noticed the captain’s indiscretion with a rapid series of disbelieving blinks, was merciful in not pursuing it. Adam was glad—he’d scolded Jade enough to last him a lifetime in the last weeks. Stabbing Briscoe, good Christ. Adam could still hardly believe it. “What do I want with your bloody organs?” Jade asked, affecting now a look of scorn. “Listen, Carson—spoils are nice, but I want an empire. Bring me that.”

Adam laughed aloud, pleased by this, and pushed Jade’s hand off his chest, flattened the man onto his own back, and braced his arms on either side of Jade’s shoulders. Jade was only marginally ruffled by this quick turnaround. It was not a surprise that he held down the captain only because the captain allowed it. Adam held his head scant inches from Jade’s, seeking solace in amber eyes, lips an agreeably short distance from the other man’s. “The whole island, you mean? Or all of England?”

Jade tried to catch Adam’s lips with his own but the captain was faster, lifting his head out of Jade’s reach and letting out a soft cruel laugh. Jade grinned deliciously. “I’d rather like a continent,” Jade said prettily, pursing his lips to make them look the softer, ever more perfect. “Of course, barring that…” Jade lunged again, this time quick enough, but instead of a kiss he bit the captain’s lower lip. “You could leave me in charge.”

Adam stiffened at the very suggestion, and not in a good way. He rolled off Jade and sat up, frowning. Jade looked annoyed, though whether it was at Adam’s ruining their game or his bad reaction, the captain couldn’t tell. Jade propped his head once again on his elbow, having the good graces not to cover himself with the sheet or turn away, but Adam would have preferred either tactic—in either event, he could have simply gone to sleep. The look on Jade’s face now made it seem like it was something he wanted to talk about. Adam swallowed a very sincere groan at the prospect.

“You presume too much,” the captain said curtly, trying to curtail the argument before it could happen. And then he thought—why should he have to curtail the argument? Why should there _be_ any argument? He was the goddamn captain. Jade was, at absolute best, the ward of his mercy. At worst? He was a trophy, a slave, taken from a conquered ship. In some part of his head, the captain knew that that wasn’t exactly true, knew that from the first time he laid eyes on Jade he’d known he couldn’t master him and that that was why he’d wanted him in the first place, and he knew that he didn’t _want_ it to be true, that Jade had sworn fealty to the ship, the captain, and the crew, and in doing so had given up everything else. And he knew that over the time they’d spent together, a year or more, he’d come to care deeply for Jade. But the part of him that knew this was not the part that spoke now.

“Take a moment and consider how ludicrous that is, pet,” he said, the endearment hollow in this brassy commander’s voice. “You in charge. The men would lynch you and make off with the _Hawk_ if they even dreamed I’d leave the boy who warms my bed in any— _any_ —position of authority.” Adam couldn’t hear his own words, not really, not over the sound of blood rushing in his ears. He was so close to everything he’d ever wanted. If he stood on the rails and leaned he could brush his hand on the mossy damp of the bluff, the bluff that shielded Isla de Providencia from attacks like his. “You’re a smart man, Jade. You should know better,” he concluded, laying his head back on his pillow and not looking at Jade, not even wanting to see his face. “Put out the lamp when you go,” he said, voice sounding odd over the racket between his ears. “It’s past time I got some sleep.”

Jade was gone soon enough, the cabin filled with dark where he had shone like the sun only moments ago. The captain didn’t regret what he’d said because he knew it was true, whether or not he ought to have said it. The words themselves hadn’t been particularly cruel, though the humorless bark of a laugh had probably grated Jade’s nerves some. No one likes to be laughed at. It was the hint of disgust in his voice, he reflected, that would probably upset Jade the most. But then again, that wasn’t something he should be worrying about. Jade’s feelings—he was the only man in the world who wasted time feeling sorry about the things he’d said to a whore. Adam didn’t think of Jade like that, generally—usually didn’t think of Jade at all, as if the man did not exist unless they were together—and that suited him. It was the way Jade had taken to occupying his thoughts lately that was truly distressing. Maybe the men were right—maybe he’d been bewitched after all.

Adam laughed again in the same broken-edged way. Enough, he told himself. It was past time he slept, just as he’d said. Tomorrow he would step foot on Providencia for the first time. Tomorrow he would risk everything, and likely lose it, for the look on the face of one man as he died.

 

 

 

Jade was on deck come morning, along with Mad Hunter and a few other men. The captain grinned at all of them as they lowered the longboat into the sea, gentle in the still predawn darkness. The captain didn’t quite meet his eyes, which suited Jade fine. He’d made a joke—mostly—when he should have known better, and the captain had put him in his place. What did he have to offer a man like that? His body only. Did he think his life had been spared all those months ago on the basis of his winning personality? They had had a duel, in which the captain had toyed with him and grinned fiercely, tiny cut bleeding. And then the captain had sentenced him to a death more horrible than that of the rest of the _Valor_ ’s crew, and then the captain had heard his last request, and then the captain had kissed him. Where in all that did he think he’d won the man’s heart? It was only his body, always his body. What trouble the thing had gotten him into. Best he didn’t speak at all, Jade thought, in the captain’s company. He wanted to continue enjoying it, didn’t he?

Didn’t he? With a parting scowl Blackheart dipped his oars and the captain followed suit, rowing first away from the island and out to sea so that, if anyone observed the angle of their approach, the _Hawk_ ’s position would not be betrayed. Jade watched them recede, caught by a sudden mad desire that the tiny longboat be swept away on some great wave, and dashed on rocks, the captain and first mate both reduced to splinters of soggy meat—fishfood, foaming red on the beach with the tide. Not that he wanted the captain dead, of course. It was just—just…

But didn’t he?

Why, Jade asked himself, don’t the men quite trust you? What is it that keeps you separate from them? Pirates aren’t born, they’re made. He could be made a pirate. He could make himself a pirate. Or at least, he could make himself into anything he wanted if the men didn’t look at him and whisper: _slattern, succubus, cock-sucking whore_. If they had to see him in his own right, as a sailor and a killer and a fiercely competent human being—if he wasn’t the captain’s plaything, the captain’s bitch. Then they’d see him for what he was, wouldn’t they? Then he could be anything. And he wanted, so badly, to be something, to be anything, _else_.

Didn’t he?

Jade looked around for Eduardo, finding it odd that he hadn’t risen to see off the captain. He may have been a prisoner of sorts on the _Hawk_ , and he may have found piracy in general contemptible, but he rose before most other men and was omniscient in his knowledge of the ship’s goings-on. He wouldn’t have missed the launch, Jade was sure of it. He checked Uardo’s hammock first, though, for the life of him, he couldn’t remember seeing the man there when he’d slunk to his own the night before, nor when he rose that morning. The hammock was empty: Eduardo’s personal effects, however limited, were also absent. As the sun climbed into the sky, ocean lapping the sides of the ship peacefully, Jade searched every inch of the ship over and again, not willing to accept the ostensible truth until he had scoured each plank, rope, and shadow and spoken to each member of the crew. Eduardo wasn’t anywhere—Eduardo was gone.

“Where’d you go, Uardo?” Jade asked softly, sitting perilously on the ship’s rail, arm wound through a ballast rope his only support, should he be jarred. He looked out over the sea, searching. The longboat containing the captain and Blackheart had long since passed from the limited range of view; there was nothing to be seen but sea, for all that they were literally close enough to land to touch it. All was still and quiet. His friend had spoken of leaving the _Hawk_ at the first opportunity, but he wasn’t a fool—he wouldn’t have returned to Providencia if he’d been dragged. When his disappearance was noticed, Jade knew it would look very suspicious. They would assume Eduardo had gone to shore or one of the other ships and betrayed their position, their intent. And what else could they assume? But Jade did not believe it. Even if Uardo had betrayed them, even if he’d jumped ship for the same isle that had cursed him and his, he would not have left without saying goodbye—without asking Jade to come with him.

The conviction was a strong one. He’d not have much luck convincing the other men of it, it being little more than a feeling, a surety, but Jade at least had no doubts. Eduardo was not on the ship, and he had not left it. There was a murderer among them. Someone had seen Uardo killed.

The blood on the deck, a wide, arcing pattern he’d not noticed sooner because of its very size, when he found it, shook Jade to his core. He knew what it meant, sticky and brown and hardening in the sun. It meant he was right. Eduardo was dead, and it had been no accident.

End Notes:

Next up: the plot continues to thicken! (That smacks of unsettling innuendo, doesn't it?) Thanks all for reading; I appreciate your comments and reviews!

  
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680>  



	7. Providence by scarredsodeep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahoy, mateys! Happy Wednesday! I don't own the boys and none of the following occurred. In spite of that, I think this chapter is very funny, and, I assure you, plot-tastically jaw-dropping. Enjoy!

  
[Providence](http://afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680) by [scarredsodeep](http://afislash.com/viewuser.php?uid=389)  


  
Summary: It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.  
Categories: [Jadam](http://afislash.com/browse.php?type=categories&catid=6) Characters:  None  
Genres:  Action, Adventure, Alt. Universe, Romance  
Warnings:  None  
Challenges:  
Series: None  
Chapters:  16 Completed: Yes   
Word count: 80688 Read: 2074  
Published: 04/29/2011 Updated: 08/10/2011 

Chapter 7 by scarredsodeep

Author's Notes:

Ahoy, mateys! Happy Wednesday! I don't own the boys and none of the following occurred. In spite of that, I think this chapter is very funny, and, I assure you, plot-tastically jaw-dropping. Enjoy!

They rowed slowly, mindful that shipwrecked men ought be exhausted, trying hard not to look like pirates. The captain had not worn his eye patch, hat, or coat—great personal sacrifices, each, for reasons both of tactic and general pirate credibility—and Havok had, well, the captain could only assume that Havok had tried to look normal. He hadn’t failed, exactly. His black hair was combed sleek and shining, tied at the nape of his neck in a knot, and he wore trousers, a shirt, and a vest they’d liberated from some traders or another. It had been difficult to convince him to leave his bandolier behind, but Adam had done it. He looked civilian enough but there was still something unsettling about him, his quick eyes and truly terrible smile and the strikingly beautiful quality behind it all. Maybe it was just that the captain knew better. Hopefully, to the rest, Havok would look less like a wolf. He’d cleaned the blood off his paws and whiskers, picked the bones from his teeth, but still Carson could tell he’d just eaten somebody.

The sun was full in the sky and they were coming up on shore fast—Providencia, Adam’s breath quickening at the thought of it, his heart skipping and stumbling—when they were spotted. Some lookout or another hailed them and sounded the alarm. By the time the two men reached the dock, it was crowded with people, armed men and curious civilians jostling one another near off the edge. Adam didn’t think they looked suspicious; it was just good form to assume that anywhere a ship that couldn’t cross open ocean turned up, a much larger one must be nearby. He would have been exactly as suspicious had it been his island.

“Look haggard,” the captain hissed to Havok. The first mate looked fresh and energetic and hungry.

Havok did not seem to think so. “Look haggard yourself!” he shot back. “And stop giving me orders!”

“Maybe I was captain of the ship that went down!” Adam managed under his breath as they drew even with the dock. He quite liked giving orders. In any event it was the last word: they were at the dock. There was a moment of silence, them staring up at the people on it, the people staring down at them. Adam flashed his best grin. “You wouldn’t believe what luck we’ve had, finding you!” he called out, and got to his feet, rocking the little boat and hoping someone would lower a hand to help haul him up on the dock.

A big, rough hand closed over his own, grip too tight from the outset, and a smudged greasy face leered back at him. “Oh, I wouldn’t call it luck,” the man growled, and yanked Adam ashore.

 

 

 

Blackheart and the captain were, to put it delicately, _escorted_ ashore by the sleaziest looking bastards Blackheart had ever seen. Huge, hulking men: one on each arm, one to prod Blackheart’s back with a sword from behind, and one to march self-importantly out front, clearing the way for, in his words, honored guests. It was obvious that trying to look like honest men had been a waste of time. Blackheart would be surprised if there was a single honest man on this entire island. If they’d just rowed over looking like themselves with a story of a pirate-themed shipwreck, or simply landed the _Hawk_ on the beach, Blackheart suspected they would have been pressed warmly into the privateer population—which, aside from a handful of whores and thralls and terrified-looking shopkeeps, seemed to be the _entire_ population. If Blackheart stole a precious chance to whisper in the captain’s ear some plan or stratagem or story that might save them, he would waste it saying _I told you so_ , because that’s exactly what he’d done. Well—he hadn’t said, exactly, that Providencia was now a pirate port and that they would stand out and open themselves up to persecution by presenting themselves as civilians. But he _had_ said he wanted to keep his guns and that their disguises would never work. Blackheart was counting that one as a win, since it seemed the only one he was likely to get for a good while.

For a moment Blackheart wondered if they might not just clear up the confusion, announce themselves as Captain Carson and Blackheart Havok and bare their respective tattoos and scars and brands, but it was possible that Henry Morgan was on the island, and it was possible that what he’d heard of Captain Carson and Blackheart besides did not paint the prettiest picture for his longevity. Still, if he was going to be executed, he’d want to be hung at the port’s entrance in a pirate’s place of honor, rotting gruesome for all to see, not buried in the dirt with some false name scratched above his head.

Blackheart looked around him at the mud and shapeless wooden buildings, most looking hastily patched up. There were drunk men slumped in the street, sleeping, and the sound of softly weeping women came from almost every alley. He did not see a single child—not even among the slaves. He couldn’t judge what manner of place this was, but it certainly didn’t look like an island paradise. The air stank of piss and shit and human filth and he, not the most hygienic of men, wondered how the others could stand it—how it was they didn’t seem to notice the stench at all. It was thick enough to gag on and, had he been any less proud, Blackheart would have. “Welcome to Providence,” he muttered under his breath, a particularly savage sword prod piercing the skin of his back for his trouble. If only the merchant were here to see it, he thought humorlessly, he’d charge in to save them the indignity.

They were led deep into the fort, along endless split logs pushed into the earth to break up the steep incline, until they at last reached a plain, squat building at the very top, overlooking everything. This vantage was the building’s only claim to grandeur. It was as ugly as the others and had only two smoky windows, covered with paper and not glass, that Blackheart could see. He was a man who valued utility vastly above beauty, but like most pirates was not without a flair for the dramatic. He simply couldn’t imagine any self-respecting man declaring such a grubby little building his headquarters without any kind of architectural or decorative pomp. Nonetheless, it was into this lackluster hovel they were escorted. Blackheart, not a tall man, had to duck his head to fit through the door. His muscle-bound honor guard had to turn sideways and hunch.

In the middle of the dark, low-ceilinged room there was a large chair, not unlike a throne. In it sat a man with a great mass of black curls, a neat, curled mustache, and a shit-eating grin. He was swathed in red and gold silk and dripping with jewels enough that Blackheart doubted there was any wealth on the island that could match what he wore on his person. Though Blackheart had never before seen him, he had heard the tales of the man who recruited privateers to his cause by seeking out the stories and the ports of the most daring pirates, dressed in red and gold and riches unimaginable, and let his wealth and word of mouth do his recruiting for him. There was no doubt that the man before him was Henry Morgan.

Blackheart stole a sideways glance at his captain. Carson remained perfectly still, face a mask of granite, though his hands—clasped behind his back—tremored something awful. Blackheart knew that, in that moment, he and the captain would have understood one another perfectly—were the same man. Carson would tear out Morgan’s throat with his teeth in a heartbeat if there was no weapon at hand, and might prefer to use his teeth even if there were one. The savagery in his eyes was total. To Blackheart, it was like looking in a mirror.

For the first time Blackheart wondered if Morgan would recognize them. The captain obviously hated the man deeply and Blackheart doubted it was simply because privateers were an unsavory bunch. Pirates did not have much in way of moral high ground in most circles; only when it came to privateers did they look even remotely noble. If the score was a personal one, might Morgan not know Carson on sight? Would his life really end this way, unarmed and helpless and murdered like a dog in this dismal little hut, surrounded by men who neither knew his name nor to fear him? Blackheart decided not. Morgan’s eyes took them in with great precision and care, but Blackheart did not note any sign of recognition. He let out a breath of relief he had not known he was holding.  
Morgan seemed to measure each before settling on Blackheart. “I’m to believe you have been shipwrecked, is that correct?”

“Aye, sir,” Blackheart replied meekly, inserting a trembling weakness in his voice, trying to appear as the man he had been, once, before the merchant had taken all that was good in him and burned it to ash.

“Is there anything of value on this ship?” Morgan asked next. “Lost lives are one thing; wasted goods are quite another.” He spoke imperiously, rolling the end of his pointed mustache between finger and thumb and only glancing at Blackheart at intervals, as if there had never been a creature of less interest, more beneath him. It was an effective tactic. Blackheart felt small, and sick, and frightfully angry. He thought of the look in Alteza’s eyes as they went blank and empty, and felt calmer.

“N-no sir,” Blackheart said, affecting a stutter. “The s-ship was smashed to p-p-pieces.”

Morgan lifted his chin at such an angle that it became possible for him to literally look down his nose at Blackheart, which is what he did. “Then you’re no good to me,” he said richly, almost smiling, and waved his hand. “Take them away. Do what you like with them.”

“Wait,” Carson said as the men moved to seize him again. “Sir Morgan. Shouldn’t you know the name of the man you condemn?”

Morgan straightened in his seat, breaking off examining his fingernails to eye Carson seriously for the first time. Being recognized thusly was both flattering and unnerving, Blackheart imagined. A disoriented shipwreck should not know where he was or who he faced. What was the captain playing at? “All right,” Morgan said with great care. “What are you called?”

Quicker than anything, Carson had unsheathed a knife from the belt of the bulky man beside him and cut the man’s throat, springing to the side as he staggered back and the other lunged. “Captain Adam Carson, at your service!” Carson crowed, ducking under the sword of his second guard, sweeping out a leg to trip the man, and burying the knife in his back to its hilt. The man on the ground coughed blood. Carson plucked the sword from his hand and whirled to face the remaining guards, four of them and dwarfing him, who had stupidly turned their backs on Blackheart to surround the captain. No man turned his back on Blackheart Havok and lived.

They had drawn their swords already but Blackheart didn’t mind close work. In one deft movement he darted a hand to a guard’s hip, freeing the man’s dagger, and made two neat, deep punctures in the man’s kidney. When the man turned to face him, roaring and half-collapsing at once, Blackheart followed the captain’s example, leaving the dagger in the man’s heart and relieving him of his longer steel. “And I am Blackheart Havok!” he roared, spit flying from his lips, and he saw fear pass over the remaining three men, though each was his size and half again. Oh, yes—they had heard his name. In a synchronized movement, he and Carson both lunged with their stolen swords. Side by side, each feinted forward, a high stroke for blocking. Blackheart changed his momentum mid-stroke, slicing neatly through the sword arm of the man he faced, leaving it to clatter to the floor, hand still gripping sword. The man howled and Blackheart turned to the third man, who was looking from the man Blackheart had just relieved of his forearm and the one Carson had half-decapitated, staggering gape-mouthed from side to side and spurting blood wildly. The final guard dropped his sword and put up his hands, backing away. “Surrender,” the man said weakly. Blackheart saw that his trousers were damp with spreading urine. Casually, carelessly, Blackheart ran him through and twisted, opening his belly and spilling its contents to the floor. The man died with a handful of his own intestines, a look of disbelief on his face.

As one, the captain and Blackheart turned away from the gore and to face Morgan, swords held aloft. Morgan stood at the foot of his throne, two pistols drawn and aimed squarely between two sets of eyes, hammers cocked, looking a little bored with the whole situation. “That’s quite enough of that,” he said crabbily. “You know how hard it is to find men that size? This is just _wasteful_.” Morgan looked from man to man before adding impatiently, “And drop the fucking swords! I’m not bloody well going to let you keep them!”

Blackheart didn’t have to look at his captain to know that the man’s sword did not drop even an inch. But it was folly—Morgan would shoot them dead, and then who would kill him? Blackheart let his sword fall, thinking that if they survived this, they might get another chance. Right now they had none. The sword clattered loudly to the packed dirt floor, now gummy and crimson with blood. There was no answering clatter from Carson.

Morgan advanced, keeping a distracted pistol on Blackheart but with eyes fixed on Carson now. “Seize him,” Morgan said with a little gesture at Blackheart, and men melted from the shadows of the walls to grab him. Blackheart could not imagine why they had not stepped in earlier, why Morgan had effectively let them slaughter his guards. Perhaps it was a competitive position. Perhaps if his guards were the type who could be slaughtered by two unarmed men Morgan preferred them dead. It was the way Blackheart would have done things.

Morgan was near enough to the captain now that the tip of Carson’s blade rested against the fine gold trim of his coat and the mouth of his pistol pressed the captain’s forehead. “Carson, you said your name was?” Morgan said musingly. “I remember you, I think, Captain. You’re the one who brought me the _Starswept_ , aren’t you? She’s a lovely ship, you know. Quite a considerate gesture. I’d hate to kill the man who gave me such a gift.”

The captain’s face distorted in a snarl. “I’m here to kill you for it,” he spat, and applied pressure enough to the sword that it sliced neatly through a bit of gold braid. The loose end bowed forward, peeling away from the coat, and Morgan frowned. Then he backhanded Carson with the pistol so suddenly and with such force that the captain staggered backwards, sword tip dropping, and spit out a tooth. He staggered directly into the arms of Morgan’s waiting men, and once his arms had been seized Morgan approached again, pistol first.

“You’ve got it backwards, lad,” Morgan said with a growl. “But first, I’m going to find your ship. Kind of you to bring me another.” Morgan patted Carson’s cheek lightly with the pistol. “Good boy,” he hissed, and turned to his men. “Take them away!” he ordered, and Blackheart did not see the point in struggling as they were bodily removed from the room.

 

 

 

“So that was exactly how you planned it, right?” Havok’s voice was decidedly laden with sarcasm as it came from the far wall of the dark cell, which he was chained to. “Starting an unarmed fight with six giants, trumpeting your name, slaughtering men for Henry Morgan’s amusement and then being arrested and chained to a wall—we’re exactly on schedule now?”

Adam thumped his head back against the wall he had the pleasure of being chained to, but not hard enough to either knock him unconscious or dash his brains out, so by and large it was a wasted effort. “Leave it,” he said in a growl, but Havok did not.

“No, actually, I don’t think I will,” Havok went on conversationally. “See—the thing is—if we were going to let them all know we were pirates anyway—why didn’t we just sail up with the bloody _Hawk_? We could’ve said word got out about the island’s new management, that we were interested in joining up. Hell—we’d have had cannons—doesn’t fucking matter what we’d say! Point is, I bet killing him would have been a lot easier—not to mention the reconnaissance we allegedly _came here to do_ —if we’d managed to avoid this whole being-chained-to-walls number, here.”

Adam gritted his teeth. He would throttle Havok in a second if he could reach him. As it was, he pulled his chains as far as they would pull, on the off chance they’d been made longer by his deep desire to wrap them around his first mate’s neck. “Davey,” he enunciated clearly, “I said _leave it_.”

“And I said I won’t,” Havok said, still in a voice like he was making polite small talk. “Not until you explain to me why exactly you needed to assassinate Henry Morgan so urgently that the failed attempt was worth both our lives.”

The captain made another half-hearted attempted at braining himself on the stone wall, but it was in vain, rather as he’d expected. Stubborn bloody skull. There was no way around it, then. He’d have to tell Havok the truth. Adam let the silence stretch between them, larger and larger, until he could stand it no longer. At last he said gruffly, “He took my ship.”

There was a pause. At length Havok repeated, “Your ship.”

“My first one!” exploded out of Adam’s mouth. It sounded almost as if he was defending himself. The captain was not much fond of that. “It was my first ship! I commandeered her fair and square and Morgan _took_ her from me.”

Havok took another measured pause to process this new information. “And is that… is that the extent of his offense?” he finally asked.

Adam was outraged. “What, that’s not enough? He should have done _more_ , that foul, evil, back-stabbing son of a bow-legged whore’s toothless grandmother’s saggy tryst with a—”

Perhaps sensing that the captain was prepared to go on in this vein for some time, Havok interrupted a little tentatively. “No, but…”

The captain’s rant dropped off immediately at the word ‘but’. The silence was total. “But?” the captain growled. “ _But_?”

Havok cleared his throat. “Well, he is a bit of a… a bit of a pirate, isn’t he?”

“Your point?” Adam’s growl had dropped even lower.

Havok, not a meek man by anyone’s reckoning, was still a little cowed by this. “Pirates tend to—to steal ships that aren’t theirs, exactly. It’s sort of what we do. You do—you do realize that, of course?”

“You’re taking _his_ side?” the captain bellowed, moving to strangle his first mate, straining anew at his chains, thrashing against them with such fervor that, to his surprise, one of them groaned and slipped a little loose from where it was grounded in the wall. Adam froze, suddenly forgetting everything else. He looped both his hands around the chain that had given, braced his feet, and began, with all his weight, to heave.

The chain’s anchor gave all at once. The bolts pulled free from the stone and Adam was knocked back by his own force, dangling from the three remaining chains in a way entirely bereft of dignity. His credibility as a pirate captain was going way down, but—with a free arm and a contortionist’s adopted grace (sure to leave him aching and strained), he could just touch his fingers to the heel of his boot. He felt around blindly, trying to work quickly, knowing the sound of the chain tearing free would have been heard, and at last his fingers found the tiny silver head of a pin. He pinched it between his fingernails and pulled it free from where he’d buried it in his boot heel and got to work picking the locks on his shackles.

When the guard came down to investigate the noise, Havok was in the dark corner, moaning. “You there, shut it,” the guard barked through the bars. Havok only moaned the louder. Adam, pressed back in the shadows, called out with panic. “Oh god, don’t leave me in here with him!” he yelped, hysterical. “Thank the lord you’re here to save me! It’s typhoid! He’s got bloody typhoid!”

Havok made a convincing-enough retching noise that the guard’s face paled considerably. Any man accustomed to living in the close quarters of a prison or a ship knew to fear typhoid more than the wrath of any earthly thing. “God save us,” the guard whispered, stepping up to the bars and peering through them, trying to get a good look at Havok.

“You have to let me out!” squawked the captain, but the guard shook his head. “It’s too late for both of you,” he said, looking frightened. “We’ll have to—we’ll have to burn you.” He moved as if to back up from the bars or sound the alarm, so Adam sprang forward, into the light, up to the bars, and grabbed the man by the throat.

“Would’ve been simpler if you’d opened the door,” Adam said with a grunt, digging at the squirming man’s belt for his keys. The guard began shouting immediately, but the captain found his quarry. He freed Havok first, knowing that once the door opened and the guard got in he might not have the chance to. Then he turned to the lock. Havok leered close to the bars to discourage the guard from drawing near again, but it would be only moments before the man realized his sword was longer than his arm and his pistol longer still. Adam found a key that fit and turned it, hoping, the sound of boots on stone steps growing.

The door swung open and they were free. Havok was on the guard in an instant, smashing the hand that fiddled with weapons at the man’s belt and driving his elbow into the man’s Adam’s apple. There was a horrible crunch that the captain deigned not to dwell on and Havok tossed him a sword, keeping the pistol, powder, and shot for himself. They exchanged a somber nod as guards charged down the narrow corridor towards them. Then the captain turned to face the oncoming horde and loosed a roar more terrible than anything the devil could muster himself.

 

 

 

“I’ll see you hanged for this,” Carson said darkly. Blackheart ignored him, choosing instead to concentrate his energies on the single-minded pursuit of rowing, rowing for his life. He worked both oars as if his life depended upon it—which it did—and found his shoulders already roaring their complaints.

At the front of the little boat, facing Blackheart and scowling, sat the captain. His right wrist and ankle were shackled to a chain of the sort used to bind slaves. Blackheart had relieved it from a fresh corpse down in the prison and had the captain half shackled before he’d known what was happening. He’d made a fuss, yelling orders and carrying on, but when Blackheart had yanked on the loose shackles he had had no choice but to follow at the pace his first mate set. That had put an end to the revenge business.

“Could you at least pretend to help, please?” Blackheart asked. One man rowing with all his might was not going to be enough to get them back to the _Hawk_ before they were overtaken, and certainly not before their escape was noted. If the captain didn’t start rowing they’d be back on Providencia by sundown—which, in retrospect, was probably exactly what Carson was hoping. “Or I could knock you out with an oar,” Blackheart added casually. The look on the captain’s face did not change, but he did pick up an oar, and began dipping it. He was not putting his back into it or showing any great enthusiasm for the task, but Blackheart figured it was the best he was going to get.

“I’m not going to apologize,” Blackheart told him after a good stretch of silent rowing. He wished he could look back and see if they were being followed yet, but didn’t want to interrupt his labors even long enough for that. If they were captured again, it would not be alive. Blackheart was not fool enough to think Morgan’s men would be even remotely interested in live captives after they found the pile of carrion down by the empty prison cell.

“We could have killed him,” the captain grumbled. “Hell, we could have taken the _Starswept_ back! The whole island, even.”

“We’d have been dead,” Blackheart answered crisply. “We’ll be dead yet if you don’t put a little effort into this. No disrespect, Captain, but this is the very worst plan you’ve ever had.”

The captain visibly sulked. “This counts as mutiny,” he said under his breath, rattling his chains.

“It does not,” Blackheart snapped back. “Row, damn it!”

His heart sang with relief as the _Hawk_ came into view at last. They hadn’t been overtaken yet—they might make it. Now that he could see the _Hawk_ , that beautiful girl, Blackheart allowed himself to hope. He even noticed the captain rowing harder as the little boat skimmed along the surface of the sea. God, Blackheart thought, surprisingly himself, it would be good to be home.

Their oars did not falter but Blackheart’s spirits did, as they drew nearer. The closer they got the more impossible it was to deny, and by the time they reached the _Hawk_ , the truth was waving cannons in their godforsaken faces. Their mad dash for freedom had been in vain. Blackheart counted four—no, five ships. The _Hawk_ was surrounded.  


End Notes:

Whatever will our daring, dastardly heroes do? Tune in next week to find out!

P.S. I enjoy your reviews like Blackheart enjoys murder: a little too much, but with very real joy! Won't you indulge us?

  
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680>  



	8. Providence by scarredsodeep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahoy there, cats and kittens! Welcome to the latest installment of this piratey tale! It never occurred, of course, and I don't own the boys. However, this might actually be my favorite chapter, and I think a lot of you are going to feel extremely vindicated--a lot of you have come extremely close to predicting the following events outright. That said, read on and enjoy!

  
[Providence](http://afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680) by [scarredsodeep](http://afislash.com/viewuser.php?uid=389)  


  
Summary: It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.  
Categories: [Jadam](http://afislash.com/browse.php?type=categories&catid=6) Characters:  None  
Genres:  Action, Adventure, Alt. Universe, Romance  
Warnings:  None  
Challenges:  
Series: None  
Chapters:  16 Completed: Yes   
Word count: 80688 Read: 2074  
Published: 04/29/2011 Updated: 08/10/2011 

Chapter 8 by scarredsodeep

Author's Notes:

Ahoy there, cats and kittens! Welcome to the latest installment of this piratey tale! It never occurred, of course, and I don't own the boys. However, this might actually be my favorite chapter, and I think a lot of you are going to feel extremely vindicated--a lot of you have come extremely close to predicting the following events outright. That said, read on and enjoy!

Mad Hunter stood at the helm, muttering happily to himself, at times laughing sharply. He spun the wheel as if he commanded the sea, as if the _Hawk_ were unmoored and eating up the distance between him and the destiny he claimed the wind had told him so much about. Jade approached cautiously, regretting the circumstances that had rendered this deranged fellow the clearest head on the ship.

Hunter looked back over his shoulder before Jade had made a sound. “Seen the blood, have you?” he asked as conversationally as if he were asking Jade how he had slept.

“I think it was Eduardo’s,” Jade told him, trying not to seem put off by the man’s apparent prescience.

“Aye,” Hunter spoke into the wind, words whipping away unsubstantial. “I’d say that’s likely. More’n a handful of men on this ship with reason to hate the Spanish armada.” Hunter looked back over his shoulder again, one eyebrow raised. “Wasn’t you, was it?”

Jade didn’t know how to respond, opening and closing his mouth as words escaped him, but Hunter merely turned back and gave the wheel a great spin, cackling quite accurately like a madman.

“Ships on the horizon?” Hunter asked next, but Jade didn’t think the question was for him. “So there are,” he said quietly, staring out. Jade rushed to the rail to see for himself. For a moment there was nothing; then a great black hull pierced the early-morning fog, the biggest ship Jade had ever seen headed straight towards them. His heart leapt in his throat and he whirled to Hunter, who only pointed his chin at the oncoming ship. Jade looked again in time to see two— _four_ more breaking through the fog in formation.

“What do we do?” he gasped, stumbling onto words at last.

Hunter grinned. “First things first, I’d get that blood off the deck. Won’t want our new friends seein’ it.”

 

For the first hour of the ships’ approach, Jade held on to the desperate hope that they hadn’t been sighted. More like than not the bluff provided them some camouflage, but not long into the second hour, when Jade began to pick out individual men on board, their crisp dark uniforms unmistakable, he gave up on any far-fetched notion of getting off that easily. Jade tried hard to steady himself, to think of ways to save them, but in another twenty minutes the crew was a silent, surly mob around him and the Spanish commander had called out his intention to board the _Hawk_.

“No weapons,” Jade muttered, half to himself and half to the crew. “We’re outnumbered. Don’t resist them.” To pile yet more shock atop the overabundance he was already possessed of, Hunter parroted these as orders in a voice that carried and brooked no argument. For once the men seemed satisfied to stand down and offer no violence. They were dead in the water, one small ship with six out-facing cannons and hedged in by reefs, surrounded by five war galleons swarming with soldiers. Perhaps even Carson’s pirates could recognize discretion as the better part of valor.

In short order a small band of Spaniards stood upon the deck, their leader—coat decorated with emblems, medals and devices far outnumbering its buttons—casting an appraising eye around him. “Who captains this vessel?” the man boomed, voice huge and commanding but not rough or unkind. A civilized voice, Jade thought. The voice of a man who had earned his place as leader and had never had to defend it or fear treachery from his men. A man respected and, more importantly, a man not often crossed—not often deceived. Jade could work with this.

“Captain’s ashore,” one of the men started to say when Jade realized what he must do, what some part of him had decided to do as soon as he saw the ships. There were at least twelve ways it could get him killed, but they were twelve ways dead already, a little nest of pirates tucked away in the heart of a Spanish war fleet. The only way they could hope to get out of this mess alive was if they weren’t pirates.

“Captain’s here,” Jade barked out in a voice he didn’t think he’d ever used before. He pushed through the swell of the crew and swaggered into the clearing around the Spaniards. He presented himself to their leader—an admiral, if Jade’s grasp of military decoration hadn’t lapsed—and stuck out his hand to be shaken. “Captain Smith Puget, sir. It is my honor to welcome you aboard the _Elder Hawk_.”

Jade waited. For a knife to bite into the flesh of his back and blot out his heart or, worse, for the laughter of the crew, of the boarding party, of the whole damn world at exactly how ludicrous a claim this was. He let his eyelids flutter closed, waiting—someone was bound to kill him, any moment now.

And then a coarse hand closed over his own and pumped it heartily. “The honor’s mine, Captain,” the man said, voice still booming but amicable. “She’s a fine ship. Admiral Jacobo Gutierrez, at your service.” The admiral dropped his hand with a chuckle and looked around again, at the faces of the crew Jade himself dared not look to. Deciding whether or not they were pirates, Providencia locals, Jade wagered. He was not keen to know what the admiral saw, certain as he was that it involved new boots for the hangman. “What brings you to these troubled waters?”

Jade took a breath. He could not quite believe the ax wasn’t about to fall—wasn’t falling already. One wrong word and the _Hawk_ would be cannon-holed splinters. “What else? Trade!” Jade heard himself say brightly. “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard the Puget name!”

The admiral surveyed the crew yet again, disbelief growing plainer on his face. “I’d heard Sir Taylor had been lost at sea, his heir and empire with him,” he said, pleasantly enough but not without suspicion. Jade found himself suddenly very grateful he looked so little like a pirate, so out of place among these rough-and-tumble men, inked and scarred and surly. He did not think he had ever felt that before.

“My father and my brother both, sir,” Jade said with a sober nod, then adding more cheerfully, spreading his arms wide, “but not the empire!”

“So this is a trade ship,” Gutierrez said, disbelief now striking a pronounced, discordant note in his voice. “And this is your crew? These men here?”

Jade laughed to mask his internal squirming and grinned beatifically. “That they are, Admiral. Welcome, welcome!” he said, blood thrilling through his veins. Lives were at stake, yes, but if he wasn’t mistaken—he was _enjoying_ himself. The man he might have been. The man, perhaps, he was. The admiral frowned subtly.

“Is there somewhere private we can speak, Captain?” Gutierrez asked. Jade led him with feigned confidence to Carson’s quarters, hoping against hope the table wasn’t laid with a scalp collection or treasure map or chest overflowing with pieces of eight. To his knowledge Carson had none of these things, almost contrived in their overt pirate-ness, but if those items or any like them existed he was sure they’d be spread out on the table now, conspiring to see him hanged.

Jade swept into the room and found on the table only Adam’s very captain-y effects—hat, fine coat, pistols polished to a high sheen. He was almost alarmed by how helpful these things were to his cause.

“Captain Puget,” Gutierrez asked with some urgency when the doors had been shut behind them, “are you the captive of these men?”

Jade could have laughed aloud, so total was his relief. He was decidedly _not_ a pirate, and grateful of it. Who else aboard could pose as a merchant and negotiate a way out of this alive? The admiral did not even remotely suspect him of dishonesty—quite the opposite, he trusted the ridiculous claim so implicitly that he meant to rescue Jade. On second thought, Jade _did_ laugh aloud. “Of course not, Admiral!” he chuckled.

“But the look of these men—”

Jade dismissed this legitimate concern with a wave of his hand, feeling taller than usual. Experimentally, he dropped Carson’s hat onto his head and wondered if it suited him. “When my father went missing he took our finest ship and its crew with him. These men were the best I could hire, and this ship this best I could outfit, with the empire—as you observed—in ruins.”

This sweeping lie so convinced the admiral that he looked embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to impinge upon their honor, Captain. I only wanted to be certain—”

Jade dismissed this too with a glib little flap of his hand, finding he quite enjoyed doing so. He wasn’t sure about the hat, but power, it seemed, became him. Perhaps Carson had been wise indeed to deny him any. “Admiral, I’m much obliged by your consideration. Having very recently come perilously close to those circumstances precisely—” Gutierrez was visibly engaged by this and, noticing, Jade changed tack. “This island here. Absolutely crawling with pirates. I thought to explore new trade opportunities with a strategic Spanish port and near lost my ship, men, and life for my trouble.”

The admiral clapped his hands together, nodding avidly. “Yes. Yes! The English bastards took the port from us! We received word not long ago. That’s why we’re here, Captain. We’re taking Providencia back.” The admiral paused to give Jade a long, grave look. “Are you a patriot, Captain Puget?” he rumbled at length.

Jade controlled his face carefully, smiled warmly. He had a sinking feeling in his gut that the situation was getting away from him, quickly. “I’ve not set foot on the mainland since I was a child,” he said with great care. The admiral did not seem inclined to commandeer the _Hawk_ and clap the crew in irons, but the claim that she was naught but a mercantile vessel was visibly ludicrous to both parties, each having laid eyes upon the decidedly unsavory crew. A dialectic mistake still held the power to damn the lot of them. Jade was not eager to have a hand in ending the lives of the men who had so recently refrained from laughing him out of his bid for captaincy of this sham.

“My father, I know, felt passionately about government. When considering the circumstances of my life I cannot pretend to match his fervor—but yes, Admiral, I love my king and country.”

The admiral inclined his head only slightly to acknowledge this. “You don’t fly her colors,” he said delicately. “A man has cause to wonder, Captain.”

Jade, though feeling a little ill, could feel himself smiling wider yet. His cheeks ached from all the mad grinning. He wondered if this was how Carson felt, bounding around with a boy’s smile bright on his face. It wasn’t charm or bravado, in his case: it was sheer bloody terror. “Call me Smith, Admiral, please,” he said, with the vague idea that he’d be less inclined to gut a man he called by name. His brother’s name felt apocryphal on his lips, wooden somehow, dredging up in him a swell of sadness for the family he was unlikely to ever see again and simultaneously the feeling that they’d never existed at all. He forced himself to swallow it and continue speaking. “These are unfriendly waters, Admiral, rife with pirate scum and English scum alike. A small ship like mine adrift in a sea full of predators takes pains not to look like prey.”

“The sharks flee before _El Conquistador_ ,” the admiral said. “All lesser creatures do.” He seemed less friendly than he had when surrounded by Jade’s men—Jade was startled by this, thinking of them as his men; five minutes playing at captain and he believed it already—but still not, it seemed, overtly dangerous. He was highborn, Jade guessed, from a fine family in good favor of the crown. A commissioned officer from the start, Jade would wager, and risen quickly through the ranks at every success. He was not a bully, this man, and would not endorse any unnecessary skirmish—but his medals had come from someplace. If it did come to a battle, Jade could not hope to last five minutes, hopelessly outmaneuvered, outmanned, and out-strategized, even had they faced not five ships but just one—even, he suspected, if their adversary was Gutierrez by himself in a rowboat with a pop gun. They were not exactly a fighting force, and he was a far cry from a general. The _Hawk_ still listed from the damages she’d taken from the reefs; they had hoped to repair when they made berth. As it was, she could not brag of her usual speed or maneuverability.

“But you could avenge yourself, Captain, and whatever men you’ve lost to Henry Morgan. Fly your colors with pride and sail alongside my fleet. We’ll drive them from the archipelago, the Spanish Main entire—back to England with the bastards! Back to soggy English weather and soggy English whores! Let the English ships sink and the English ports burn—maybe then they’ll be less keen to choose pirates as their allies! What say you?”

Gutierrez had worked himself into a froth. His eyes burned and his voice had grown in timbre and pitch to be almost deafening. He seemed on the cusp of some grand gesture—setting fire to an English flag, perhaps, or swearing an actual blood oath. To preclude him from any such drastic, binding action, Jade spoke quickly, unable to match the admiral for passion but quite dwarfing him, he thought, for pragmatism.

“My men and ship have already suffered much by Sir Morgan,” he said. “I do yearn for retribution, but…” He trailed off with real apprehension. If the state of Providencia was truly as Gutierrez said, what chance had Blackheart and the captain of returning? And might not it bode far better for the continuation of his faux captaincy and the gambit itself if they did not?

“I cannot commit my men to war without their say,” Jade went on, wielding pragmatism more deftly than he’d known he could and speaking over his own doubts. “They are not soldiers, neither trained for nor accustomed to combat. Let me speak to them, Admiral, and see if we might not throw our lot in with your own.”

The admiral gave Jade a level look. “This is less than I expected of a patriot, but I suppose you are a businessman first and foremost. Your men have made no vows. Join me aboard my flagship at sundown; we will sup together and reach an accord.” The admiral strode to the cabin doors and threw them wide, pausing to say, “And Captain—you yourself have said these pirates prey upon your kin and livelihood. Do not make the mistake of thinking that this is not your fight.”

With those parting words hanging between them like a gallows rope, Gutierrez took his leave. Jade breathed for what felt like the first time since the man’s standard issue boots had touched the deck. Being pressed into a land dispute against his will—even dinner aboard _El Conquistador_ —were not pressing concerns. The real challenge, Jade knew, was convincing the crew to let him live long enough to worry about either of those impending crises.

He straightened Carson’s hat on his head and stepped out of the cabin.

 

 

 

When he’d swept into the cabin like a lion, Hunter had really believed Jade would get them through this alive. He’d really believed the _Valor de España_ and Jade himself had been blown into his path deliberately, with this specific end in mind. Without Jade’s intervention they’d be in one of the fearsome galleon’s brigs right now, the lot of them, with only their own signed death warrants for company.

But the mouse that crept out of the cabin again near dispelled the entirety of Hunter’s faith. “Are you sure about this?” he muttered, but the wind held its tongue. Hunter sighed. “Have to do everything myself,” he grunted, crossing the deck to intercept Jade before the crew did.

“Captain!” he called as he went, hoping to lead by example. “Cap’n Puget, a word!”

He cut a dashing enough figure, Hunter saw. The hat helped. He’d be better suited by something with a feather but the mantle of command drew attention to the sheer size of him. He was narrow and willowy, leaving Hunter to often discount his physical presence, but the man was tall—perhaps the tallest on the ship—with some of the largest hands Hunter had ever seen, and an impressive breadth to his shoulders when he squared them.

At the sound of his borrowed title Jade paled, looking nauseous. The illusion of command dissipated. If he vomits on me, Hunter thought to himself, I’ll hop into the noose myself. There is only so much a man can do, after all.

“Don’t go fainting on me,” Hunter warned as he drew abreast of the ersatz captain. “We should find you a bigger hat,” he added. Jade just stared at him. Hunter took him by the elbow and drew him to the rail, mindful of the precipitating vomit.

“The men,” Jade squeaked finally, holding tight to Hunter’s arm as if he’d collapse without it. “Gather the men.”

Hunter raised an eyebrow. “You’re in no state to address them,” he said, adding under his breath, “And they call me mad.” When Jade said nothing further, Hunter went on. “They aren’t the mutinous horde you’re fearful of, but you’ll still need a mite more bluster for them. Was a brave thing you did, Cap’n. They’ll not cut your throat for savin’ their hides, so put that from your mind.”

Jade swallowed hard and drew himself up. It was not entirely convincing. “If you can’t follow my orders I’ll find a first mate that can!” he barked, sounding at least half like he believed it. Hunter found a bit of conviction and leaned on it hard. “Gather the men, damn it.”

Hunter smiled to himself and saluted crisply. “Yes sir!” he cried. As he made his way to carry out his order, Jade called out, “And see what you can do about the hat!”

Presently Hunter had the men on deck, not exactly at attention but not as unruly as they might have been. He stood proudly at Jade’s side, gold ring on every finger and dressed in his best vest, a dark silk affair with bright silver buttons. He bared his teeth to the men, flicking his tongue over them occasionally to help the gold ones shine. He’d never been a first mate before, and wanted to look the part. At a nod from Jade he hollered for quiet, and then stepped back to let the man speak.

“I realize the recent change in leadership may come as a surprise to some of you!” he yelled, and the men grumbled their assent. “But this is a Spanish fleet, and they don’t take kindly to brigands. We are outnumbered, outgunned, and have no hope of escape. What is more, the admiral has requested our aid in retaking Providencia!” To this there were decidedly louder grumbles, and Jade looked from man to man, meeting their eyes sternly. He seemed far less likely to vomit now, Hunter noted proudly. “With a force this size we can hope to rout Sir Morgan from this island! That means that every speck of gold hidden on those beaches will be unattended and unclaimed. We stand no chance against the privateers alone, and even less chance against the Spanish navy. So we can sail away empty-handed with a target drawn on our backs—or we can join the fight and take Providencia’s secret spoils for our own!”

Jade’s words were met with a roar from the crew. They’d heard Carson go on about the fabled treasure troves that gave Providencia its name oft enough and given enough weeks to the search that giving up would sting. And with five much larger ships at their side, doing the real work and leaving their lighter, faster vessel to simply dart between wrecks and catch the cowardly rabble that slipped through the formation—Hunter wasn’t sure how he’d done it, exactly, but Jade had made the idea of fighting on the side of the law sound promising indeed. The wind rubbed silky and warm on his face as Hunter considered it.

“I know you all think I’m mad, Briscoe especially—” There were laughs at that, the loudest from Briscoe himself—“but consider the words of a madman! We can choose not to fight and risk not just the gallows but also scraping the bottom of our coffers, which are not so deep as they once were—or we can pile the _Hawk_ with gold enough to sink her and sail away with the blessing of the Spaniards and a standing invitation to enjoy a hero’s welcome at this port.” Hunter himself was half taken in by Jade’s pretty words. It wasn’t the way a proper pirate might go about it, but then again pirates were traditionally hanged by the sort of men Jade presented as unlikely allies. And as it was said—any port in a storm.

“What say you?” Hunter bellowed, stepping up now that the speechifying was done. The response from the crew was deafening. As their shouts and howls began to take shape, Hunter listened closely, making certain he heard.

Yes—CAPTAIN JADE, they were chanting. CAPTAIN JADE. Even the wind picked up their cry, and carried it.

 

 

 

With great care Hunter smudged the stick of kohl under Jade’s eyes, squinting one-eyed to evaluate his work. Altogether Hunter had mustered four different hats, a gold brocade vest, a long dark blue coat with impressive braidwork and tiny, twinkling glass beads, boots with gold buckles and a stained white shirt adorned with an ungodly amount of frill. Jade picked through the loot, trying on different combinations and hats. Hunter applied the cosmetic to make him look savage and fierce—he understood that native fighting men from the islands wore it for battle. The smoky black haze it added under Jade’s eyes made their amber shine, quick and cold and cunning, and well-matched to the golden vest. Jade protested that the coat was ridiculous and no one would expect a captain to dress like a nobleman at a fête, but Hunter wouldn’t have it. He was the son of a nobleman, posing as a merchant, and about to attend a formal dinner with an admiral in the Spanish navy—it absolutely _was_ a fête, and he was going to dress for it. Jade kept his plain shirt and trousers and boots, however. The boots with the golden buckles were too small, and once Jade had a look at the dress shirt he wouldn’t let it near him. Hunter felt rather like a nursemaid, chasing him around the hold with his arms full of fine clothes, but by the end of it—Hunter crowning his handiwork with a wide-brimmed, feathered hat—Jade looked every inch a captain. The frown he had put on especial for the occasion also suited; it was the frown of a man in command, endlessly faced down with quarrels and choices.

Hunter gave a nod to confirm it. “You’re ready,” he said. Jade no longer looked the meek bed-mate of a capricious captain; he looked a man in his own right, broad-shouldered and tall and really, Hunter saw, quite beautiful. Looking at him, Hunter believed the lie himself. Jade looked like someone other men would follow, like the sort of dignitary one had to be to keep friendly relationships alive with so many different cities and ports. There was nothing that looked rough or unrefined about him, not like Carson in his weather-beaten coat and scuffed boots, craggy nose and scarred chin—but the very effects that made him appear soft and cultured and pretty revealed not softness, not weakness, but his sharp edges, the razor-keen edges and severity of a man who, it seemed to Hunter, would do anything necessary to keep his men and his business interests alive and well. Even Hunter, who had dressed the man personally, found himself none too keen to cross him.

Beneath the jacket and vest Jade’s plain white shirt fell open, revealing smooth brown muscle between its folds and a black cord tied at his neck. Rubies and emeralds caught the firelight and glimmered on his fingers; there was a small gold hoop for each ear, shining prettily, and his eyes were like jewels themselves, framed in kohl. The hat’s brim cast a shadow over Jade’s face, leaving his eyes to gleam out from the darkness, dangerous. Hunter never would have thought such a transformation possible, were he not seeing it with his own eyes.

“I look ridiculous,” Jade insisted, fiddling unhappily with the beautiful officer’s sword that had hung from his waist since he’d cut Carson’s cheek with it. “They’ll laugh me off the ship. Carson never has to dress like this.”

Hunter ignored these complaints, taking Jade by the arm and leading him out of the hold. “Best not keep the admiral waiting,” he advised, tugging the man and his leaden scowl above deck. “Wind wishes you luck, sir. Tonight, you are blessed.”

“I look like a goddamned cake,” Jade muttered under his breath, but his complaint was cut short as they emerged on the deck. Men that had been idly toying with the rigging, or openly gambling, loitering or roaring with laughter at each others’ bawdy tales, sobered at the sight of him. Without any prompting, Hunter watched the men stand at attention, some removing hats with respect, all of them standing straight and still and silent, a few saluting. As if in a daze Jade moved among them, nodding and touching two fingers to the brim of his hat. “Evening, men,” Jade said as he passed Briscoe, red angry scar at his breast and dice cupped respectfully in his hand, and the men murmured their respectful responses. The look of sheer wonder on Jade’s face did not detract from his air of command; Hunter met his eyes over the heads of the men, some bowed in deference, and the knowledge passed between them that Carson had never received any such ceremony. Jade touched a hand to his sword pommel, as if drawing from it strength, and called out, “At ease, boys!” A ripple of men relaxing their postures chased across the deck, but they were still a far sight from the unruly tangle they usually favored.

“Everything I do tonight, I do for you,” said Jade, and Hunter saw some satisfied nods at his words. “Every word I speak, every bite I eat, every vow I make—in your honor, to uphold the promises I’ve made to you!” The men had surprising patience for these grand speeches and gestures, more than Hunter would have suspected. They seemed even to enjoy the displays. They liked the idea, Hunter reckoned, of a captain who owed allegiance and thanks to _them_ , and not the other way round.

“Tomorrow the sun rises red, and we fight!” Jade yelled out, and there was a response, a few cheers and shouts from the crew. “Tomorrow we set Henry Morgan afire and take for our own everything that’s his. Tonight, live well and fully, for tomorrow we may die.” The men roared at this, many of them shaking their swords in the air. Hunter had never seen men so eager to die, but wisely chose not to say so. Speech exhausted, Jade touched again the brim of his hat, and together they stepped onto the steep boarding ramp the _Conquistador_ had dropped that morning. The men cheered for him as he ascended to the admiral’s ship, and Hunter looked out across them, seeing on their faces faith and gold-lust and something like loyalty. The decisions the captain—the real one, that is—had made lately had not, apparently, been entirely to the liking of the crew. Hunter knew well enough that it was unwise to ask them, to involve overmuch the crew in the burden of decision-making that belonged to the captain alone, but Jade’s farcical captaincy had clearly inspired something in them. They forgot that Jade asked their opinions and permissions because he was not their real captain; they mistook it for a new style of leadership, and one they clearly liked. It had been wise of him, Hunter noted, to stab Briscoe on the islet. It had shown the steel at his core. He had not expected the men to forget that Jade was little but the captain’s pet, but they seemed less mutinous than ever, even without Blackheart’s crawling gaze to police them.

He could not guess whence came the loyalty from these notoriously disloyal men. Perhaps it was a battle-bond, emerged from their mutual peril; perhaps it was gratitude. Perhaps it was admiration for his bravery—Jade was the only man aboard the _Hawk_ who stood a chance of surviving the wrath of the Spanish, being possessed of a certain tale of captivity and the siege of his father’s ship with which to buy his freedom. Instead he had stepped forward and impersonated an officer, a merchant licensed and blessed by King Felipe himself, the last son of a limping empire—instead he had offered his skinny neck, so easily wrung at the smallest misstep or loose utterance of fact, in place of all their own. He idly sought the wind’s counsel, but it too favored Jade.

Whatever the reason, Hunter thought, he would be glad when the real captain returned to the _Hawk_ and put things back to rights. Everything would return to normal, he would know where he stood, and this deep grating sensation of unease and danger that he no longer believed emanated from the imminent Spanish would dissipate at last.

No sooner had he thought it than Oarless called down from the crow’s nest. “A galley approaches!” he yelled. “Blackheart and the—the captain aboard!”

Hunter gave the orders without thinking, words flowing from his lips all of their own. “Help them up,” he barked. “Quickly, before the Spaniards see them—get them on board!” Hunter paused to lick his lips. The eyes of the men were on him. He was mate, now. There was no going back. He cried out the rest of the order at the top of his voice: “And throw them in the brig!”

End Notes:

Oh. Snap. The excitement continues next Wednesday!

  
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680>  



	9. Providence by scarredsodeep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised you adventure and betrayal on the high seas, didn't I? Well--here it is! I don't own the boys and this never happened, but I truly do appreciate you all reading it!

  
[Providence](http://afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680) by [scarredsodeep](http://afislash.com/viewuser.php?uid=389)  


  
Summary: It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.  
Categories: [Jadam](http://afislash.com/browse.php?type=categories&catid=6) Characters:  None  
Genres:  Action, Adventure, Alt. Universe, Romance  
Warnings:  None  
Challenges:  
Series: None  
Chapters:  16 Completed: Yes   
Word count: 80688 Read: 2074  
Published: 04/29/2011 Updated: 08/10/2011 

Chapter 9 by scarredsodeep

Author's Notes:

I promised you adventure and betrayal on the high seas, didn't I? Well--here it is! I don't own the boys and this never happened, but I truly do appreciate you all reading it!

No sooner had they rowed to within an arm’s length of the _Hawk_ than the ropes uncoiled down the sides. Hobbled as he was, the captain managed to feed the frayed knots through the oar locks quick enough, checking that the pulleys were tight before tugging, communicating his readiness to the men on the other end of the ropes. With a nod to Havok—a man whom Adam was still considering throwing overboard for crimes of petty mutiny—the captain seized the belaying rope in coarse hands and began to heave. Bit by bit the galley was lifted from the water, Havok and the captain matching their pace and the men above timing their own efforts precisely. The little ship swayed upwards in great jerks, but remained even; they matched their pulls and the galley did not tip. When they were high enough, the captain and Havok each poked an oar above the rail, hauling themselves on deck with the help of the waiting men. Emptied, the little longboat rocketed through the air in response to the men’s efforts and was stowed efficiently.

“Unshackle me immediately,” the captain ordered, mustering every last drop of command he possessed and turning on Havok with the kind of glare that would have undone a lesser man. Even as Havok rifled his pockets for the key, the voice of Mad Hunter came from over the captain’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t be doin’ that if I were ye,” he warned.

“And why not?” Adam had only begun the question when Hunter relayed a wordless order to the crew and two of his biggest men seized the captain roughly by the shoulders. Adam looked to his first mate: Havok too had been accosted before he could so much as reach for his knife.

“Mighty sorry ‘bout this, Cap’n,” Mad Hunter said in Adam’s ear, and then darkness fell all around him.  
When the bag was removed from the captain’s head, it took him a few moments to acclimate himself. It was damp and poorly lit, only one guttering lamp on a far wall to illuminate the grim chambers. A door clanged shut just as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, just in time for him to understand where he was—the brig. The goddamn brig of his own ship.

Across from him, in the other cell, Havok spoke. “Seems we’ve spent the whole damn day behind bars,” the man said, almost as if he had a sense of humor.

“Mutiny,” Adam said, the word metallic on his tongue, tasting of blood. An unnamed fury boiled behind his eyes, making him blind and deaf and stupid, stumbling about in rage. He gripped the bars before him so hard that the metal bit into his hands and was colored by his blood. “Who is responsible for this?” he asked, thinking his voice quiet as he couldn’t hear it over the screaming of his heart. “Who did this?”

Mad Hunter showed his teeth regretfully from where he stood, wisely just out of arm’s reach of Havok or the captain. “Don’t take it to heart, sir. No one wanted this less than ‘im.”

“I—said— _who_!” Carson bellowed, spit flying from his mouth in blind rage.

“Captain Puget, sir,” Hunter said, and Adam’s heart exploded screaming, and for a mad, shrieking moment or two, he forgot what it was to be a man, and was instead an animal.

When the captain returned to himself, he found his hands broken open and bloody from being pummeled on the bars. His arms were streaked with red up to the elbow, and his throat was torn from screaming ‘til he could scarcely speak. His ears throbbed with what at first he thought to be the echoes of his impassioned curses and yells, but came to realize were the screams and damnations of Havok. Adam massaged one aching hand with another, both slick with red and wet, and breathed deeply, tasting iron.

Jade had taken his ship.

Jade—his pretty Jade—the one he should have been kinder to, or crueler to, or never taken on at all—the one he should have let Davey kill, the one he should have left in charge to prevent this kind of power play—the one his loyal-enough men would never follow. The merchant, the outcast, the slave that existed to tend to Adam’s bed. The men would _never_ follow him. He’d stabbed Briscoe, for god’s sake. He’d sided with some Spanish bastard over the crew! Or had they forgotten that?  
Spanish—for the first time Adam remembered the ships, the fleet surrounding the _Hawk_. Had Jade sold him to the goddamned navy on top of everything? “What of the other ships?” he asked in a whisper, hoarse and hard to hear from his ripped throat and blotted out entirely by Havok’s passionate screams. “What of the ships that surround us?” he asked again, more forcefully. Hunter, hearing him, stepped nearer—not near enough that Adam could reach him through the bars, but still too near, Adam thought, to be assured of safety.

“War galleons,” Hunter answered sagely. “But maybe Puget can tell you the rest, eh? I’m first mate now,” Hunter confided, poking a proud thumb into his own chest. “Better offer than you ever made, sir. An’ accordingly, I got duties to attend to, if you’ll excuse me.”

Hunter turned on heel and left them there to rot in the brig, leaving one frowning guard and Havok’s shouting and Adam, bleeding and robbed of all, alone.

Adam leaned his back against the bars, tipping his head back and bleeding all over himself, trying to decide just how he’d be cutting Jade’s pretty throat when he got out of this mess.

 

 

 

 

Full of jellied quail eggs, roasted duck and strawberry wine, Jade shook hands with Gutierrez enthusiastically. If Eduardo had mentioned they ate like this in the navy—but the thought of his friend, his dead friend, was sobering. Jade did not pursue it. His next act as captain, he decided, would be the investigation of Eduardo’s murder. He hadn’t mentioned it yet, even to the men whose detail included scrubbing the deck of the sanguine spray. At first he hadn’t wanted the men to think Eduardo had betrayed them, and turn next on Jade, as the Spaniard’s rescuer. Now that the Spanish were their temporary allies, there was no reason to hold back—no reason but his own squeamish fear of finding and punishing the man who’d done it. The crewmen were not his friends, really; he had too long been the captain’s plaything to establish any alliances. But he still didn’t relish the idea of accusing one of them of murdering a captive and forcing them to walk the plank, or perhaps handing them over to the Spanish, as if it were a crime. Among pirates, Jade reminded himself, murder was not exactly considered malfeasance.

While these thoughts went through his head, Jade gave the appearance of attending closely to the heavily embellished war story Gutierrez was telling him. Another point of concern, Jade thought, was what to do when Carson came back—if Carson came back. He couldn’t very well give up his charade in the middle of the Spanish fleet, but he couldn’t imagine the captain forgiving him for what he’d done, even if it had saved the _Hawk_ and the men. Jade remembered too well how Carson had reacted to his request, more than half a joke, to be left in charge. The captain would say that any of the men could have played merchant, that Jade had no business enacting what was effectively a mutiny. In any other circumstance Jade might have agreed with this—but they were alive, weren’t they? No matter what Carson would say or how Jade might be punished, they were alive. That had to count for something.

The admiral bade him good evening, Jade’s head swimming with his own mess of thoughts as well as Gutierrez’s plans for the coming battle and the new responsibilities he found himself laden with, though he had not meant to really be the captain, only to dress up as one. Carson could not return to the _Hawk_ soon enough, Jade decided—it might be that he’d not be forgiven, but he’d suffer any punishment the captain devised gladly if it freed him of the burden of taking the lives of the crew into his hands.

Jade had barely finished thinking it when he stepped onto the deck of the _Hawk_ , surprised at how much like coming home it felt, and was met by Mad Hunter’s crisp salute. The man had taken to his role of first mate astonishingly well—he looked the part and enacted it efficaciously, though Jade was beginning to suspect he had forgotten it was all an act. The wholehearted support of the crew had been unexpected, to say the least—but Jade didn’t want anyone getting the idea that this was a mutiny. It was a last-ditch effort to save their hides. Jade didn’t know the first thing about being a captain. (But, a nagging voice sing-songed in the back of his head, didn’t he? Hadn’t he all but run his father’s ship as Sir Taylor’s mind was mired more and more in drink? Jade firmly ignored this suggestion.)

“Cap’n,” Mad Hunter greeted him. “Blackheart an’ Carson have returned, sir.”

_Oh, thank god_ , Jade thought, and swept his hat off his head immediately. The captain was safe—the captain was here. Carson could resume command, Jade could continue interfacing with the admiral, and once the battle was over—he hoped Carson would go along with that, there was no backing out of it now—everything could go back to how it had been. Jade did not stop to wonder if that was what he really wanted—if that was what anyone wanted.

“Is the captain in his quarters? I think it’s best I explain all this to him before he gets the wrong idea,” said Jade.

To his growing horror, Hunter gave him a mad sort of look, one eyebrow contorting over a cart-wheeling eye. “Begging your pardon, sir,” Hunter said, and Jade felt sick at the styling, “but he’s in the brig.”

It was a mark of his incredible fortitude, Jade thought, that he did not faint dead away at the words. “The _brig_?” he sputtered as soon as he was able to speak. “What—why in god’s name—the _brig_? What is he doing in the goddamned brig?”

Mad Hunter had the—Jade wasn’t sure what quality it was, actually; sheer bloody-mindedness, maybe, or legitimate insanity—Mad Hunter had the whatever-it-was to look truly affronted by this. As if Jade was the lunatic in this situation. “I locked him in myself, Cap’n,” Hunter said, sounding wounded. “Didn’t think you’d want him hung.”

Jade was a little surprised his head did not actually explode at this. “ _Hung_? For the love of god, Hunter, you don’t think this is a mutiny! I’m just—I’m just saving our skins is all! Once the entire goddamn Spanish armada gets out of our hold, all this is forgotten!”

“But Cap—” Hunter started.

“Don’t call me that!” Jade screeched, surprised to find his hand clenched tight around his sword handle, surprised at how real the fury he felt was. He had _changed_ , he realized, uncurling his fingers with great effort of will. His time on the _Hawk_ had changed him. The man he’d been—the man he’d been did not wear a sword at all, let alone reach for it every time he was challenged or unhappy, every time he had a point to prove. Surely he would not have drawn it. Surely he wouldn’t have raised it against Hunter—surely he’d not have run the man through. Jade tried to convince himself. He forced himself to breathe deeply, steadying.

“Don’t call me that,” he repeated more calmly, swallowing the heat of his anger and falling back instead on that sharp edge that had been growing inside himself. “I am _not_ the captain of this ship, nor do I want to be. Is that clear?”

Mad Hunter looked at Jade like he was the stupidest man to ever draw breath. “Good luck tellin’ the crew that,” he muttered, madly, under his breath. Shaking his head, muttering, he skulked away, shooting back at Jade strange, mad glances, like he’d never seen him before, like he couldn’t fathom why Jade didn’t want to take the _Hawk_ for his own—like he couldn’t fathom why any man in the world wouldn’t turn traitor if he were given half a chance.

It was not a very reassuring look to receive. Jade placed the hat back on his head, steeling himself for what was to come, and climbed below deck, headed for the brig.

 

 

 

 

The merchant strode into the brig like he owned the place and Blackheart gnashed his teeth at the sight, at the black venomous beast roiling underneath his skin, stretching inside him, gnawing his bones. He was dressed ridiculously, like a child playing at being a captain, with a great feathered hat and a grim look upon his face and a dandy’s raiment. Blackheart spat at him, a great grey gob of saliva and filth and dried blood, but did not take the time to aim; it only spattered the merchant’s boot. The man looked down at it disdainfully but said nothing.

“Leave us,” he said simply to the single posted guard, and the man nodded deferentially, quick to obey. It was nauseating and set Blackheart’s flesh to trembling with the fury of it.

The look on the captain’s face, however, was the most beautiful thing Blackheart had ever seen. The familiar weathered planes were twisted into a mask of loathing, a snarl fouler than any Blackheart himself could muster. His eyes were stormy pits, wracked with the thousand deaths he was envisioning for the merchant. Were the situation any less dire, Blackheart might have crowed in delight to finally, finally see the captain look at the merchant that way.

“Release us, traitor!” the captain spat. “I’ll kill you myself for this.”

The merchant raised an eyebrow, nonplussed. “I think you may have gotten the wrong impression about what’s going on here,” he said quietly, and Blackheart lunged at the bars, howling, scrabbling with clawed hands but falling dreadfully short of the merchant’s scrawny neck.

“The wrong _impression_?” the captain roared. “You led a mutiny against me and made a deal with the fucking _Spanish_! What kind of impression were you _hoping_ I’d get, you bloody cunt?”

The merchant affected a slight wince and, unbeknownst to himself, Blackheart began to chant _kill you kill you kill you_ under his breath, as if it were the beating of his heart, the pumping of his blood. This might have gone on indefinitely if the merchant hadn’t shot a frown at him, damned face so horribly beautiful, and said simply, “Enough, Davey.” Blackheart heard himself, his own words, and though he did not wish to, fell silent.

The merchant then stepped dangerously close to Carson’s cell, and Blackheart nodded judiciously. Carson would seize him—wrest free his sword—and this farce would end, brilliant red, along with the merchant’s miserable life.

But Carson did not move—yet. Instead, for all the murder in his gaze, he was still. Blackheart realized with horror that he was _listening_ —giving the bastard a chance to explain.

“The circumstances are… regrettable,” the merchant said. “All that I’ve done, I’ve done to save the _Hawk_ … the crew. What should I have done? Flown the black flag and let them kill all of us, sink the ship?”

“Better that than—” the captain snarled, but the filthy merchant only raised his quiet, even voice, speaking over him.

“I’m here—I came here to release you both,” he said. “This is… I didn’t mean for it to be this way. But I’ve convinced the admiral that this is a merchant ship—that I am my father’s son, my little brother—and the men have agreed… _I_ have agreed to lead the _Hawk_ in battle. We are sworn to assist the navy in retaking Providencia. When it is done, I have the admiral’s word that he will not inspect closely what spoils we stow in the hold—and that we sail free.” The merchant paused, and Blackheart waited for the captain to speak, but he did not. “He is not a fool. He does not believe that these are honest men, but neither does he believe that I am not one. He could deliver signed warrants for the death of every man on this ship within the hour—or within an hour of the battle’s conclusion—but so long as we continue this ruse, I do not think he will. The Spanish cannot be seen to ally themselves with brigands—they aren’t the English, after all—but the speed and maneuverability of the _Hawk_ will be a boon to them in such treacherous waters. This façade benefits us all, Captain. It was the only way I could think of to save us.”

The merchant had exhausted, now, his supply of meaningless lies. Blackheart waited for the captain to surge forward, to seize the man by the throat. The captain’s eyes were no less tumultuous, but he seemed to be considering the merchant’s words. For the first time it occurred to Blackheart that this incursion, this blatant fucking _mutiny_ , might be forgiven. His blood turned to ice in his very veins.

“It was not up to you to save the _Hawk_ ,” the captain said at length. The tone of his voice was unreadable. “I left Mad Hunter in command, when we went ashore. It was not your place to—”

“If I had not acted, every man upon this ship would be dead!” the merchant cried out suddenly, eyes blazing gold, voice full of rage. Blackheart saw his hand go to the hilt of his sword and tighten upon it. “Admit it or not, but you know it’s the fucking truth!”

“What you’ve done is unforgiveable!” the captain spat back. “If you are loyal to me, you will return command of this ship to me immediately—or I swear to you, I will see you dead.”

The merchant visibly reigned himself in, eyes still afire, and spoke again in a steadier voice. “I will not condemn the men aboard this ship to death on account of Captain Carson’s injured pride,” he said, voice steely with resolve and bitter with insult. He sounded a different man entire than the one Blackheart remembered, the one Blackheart had thought he glared at each day aboard this ship. “If that is the way you feel, you may remain in the brig for the remainder of my—my captaincy.” The merchant said the word as if it pained him. “You will be released when the last Spanish ship sails away. You have my word.”

The merchant stepped back, grave-faced, and made to leave the brig. But in doing so he stepped just a little too near to Blackheart’s cell, and Blackheart seized his opportunity, man enough to do what the captain was not. Blackheart’s grubby fingernails bit into the soft skin of the merchant’s white throat, the sensation like a lightning bolt across all his flesh, and he wrenched the pretender back against the bars. The merchant fought with both hands, trying to release Blackheart’s grip or strike at his body, but the bars of the cell protected him. Blackheart’s hold was true and he scrabbled with his other hand at the merchant’s belt. In quarters so close he would not be able to draw the sword, so he felt instead for a knife. Years later, it seemed, his fingers closed around a cool wooden handle at last; blood leaking from fingernail wounds made the merchant’s throat slick and hard to grip. The man was emitting strangled screams, the sweetest sounds Blackheart had ever heard, and across the way the captain was yelling too, though the words were lost to Blackheart. Laughing with the mad joy of it, the bliss, _at last at last_ , Blackheart freed the knife from the merchant’s belt and thrust it quickly through the bars, where it found hot sweet purchase in the struggling flesh of the man’s back. The merchant’s cry of pain was orgasmic; Blackheart felt it coursing over his body in blissful waves of pleasure and release. He pulled the knife free, handle now slick with hot, hot blood, but as he moved to drive it in again he lost his grip on the merchant’s torn neck—Jade twisted free, eyes wild with pain and anger, and drew his sword—he had never been more beautiful as he lifted his arm to strike—and as the pommel of the sword crashed into Davey’s fevered skull he had time for one thought only, and he wasted it on regret, regret that Jade was yet too soft, had used the wrong end.

 

 

 

Hunter oversaw the release of the prisoners specially, leaving the business of cleaning and sewing Jade’s wound to Briscoe, who had taken the attack on the new captain rather personally and was eager for the job. Mad he might be, Hunter thought privately, but never had _he_ so loved a man for sticking him with his own blade. Further baffling to him was Jade’s decision to release the prisoners in the first place. Carson had made an unholy fuss over the new captain’s wound—screaming and hollering ‘til the dismissed guard peeked his head back into the brig with time enough to see Jade brain the former first mate and collapse himself, a long deep rent in his back, vital parts saved only by way the knife had stuck in one of his ribs. And even when Jade had been rushed from the brig and roused with liberal application of a bucket of water and Hunter’s personal flask of spirits, Carson had kept carrying on—screaming and threatening the shaken guard until the man had sought Jade’s counsel. Hunter did not think the business of the acting mutiny quite forgotten and, himself, didn’t see why keeping Carson behind bars until his head cooled was in anyone’s eyes a bad decision—but it was Jade he had been howling for, Jade he had been threatening the guard to see, Jade’s life he was suddenly interested in preserving.

Hearing this, Jade had seemed to crumble, the last of his strength leaving him as he gave in to the pain of the wound he had not seemed to entirely feel until that moment. “Bring him to me,” Jade had ordered immediately, ignoring utterly Hunter’s counsel. “Release them both.” When Hunter had protested the wisdom of freeing his would-be murderer, Jade had given him a cool look and said, as though he thought himself wise, “Does caging him make him less a beast, or more one? Post sentries outside his cabin. He is not to leave it without permission and supervision. But let him out of the brig, for god’s sake. Putting him there is what made this mess.”

Hunter did not agree with that, either. It was his feeling that these unfortunate circumstances—from the approach of the Spanish fleet up to this very moment—were precisely to Blackheart’s liking. They hadn’t made a mess, they’d allowed him the proper backdrop to express the disaster he carried in his heart. He would try again to kill Jade—the wind had said as much. And he would die, taking many with him and doing no small harm, before things had run their course. But the other thing the wind had told him was to follow Jade—it had been quite vehement on the point that, no matter what befell them, Hunter must do as Jade told him to, must with all his strength support Jade in his every harebrained venture, for their destinies lay along a path much twisted and entwined. Hunter had done far worse things (and on far more vague instructions) than set a few men free in the name of the wind, so when Jade made it clear his mind would not be changed—even as he spurted blood like a fountain, making a mess of himself and the men around him—Hunter ceased to argue, and did as he was told.

He had expected Blackheart to fight tooth and claw, like a rabid dog from the moment his cell was opened. But the man he oversaw was almost docile, smiling serenely, Jade’s blood all down his front, hands wet with it, a fine spatter of the stuff rouging his face. He made no attempt to clean himself, so when Hunter searched him for weapons before letting him above deck he scrubbed it roughly with the musty handkerchief from his vest’s pocket. If he expected this to bring a scowl to Blackheart’s face, he was disappointed: that eerie, peaceful smile did not so much as waver, Blackheart’s eyes smooth and empty with bliss. Never one to put any man at ease, Hunter nonetheless found an otherworldly chill come over him at the sight. The look on Blackheart’s face made his skin crawl half off him. The men that led Blackheart to his quarters, none too gently, had looks on their own faces that reflected how totally their loyalties had shifted. Blackheart’s attack on the erstwhile captain had, it seemed, emboldened their already lurking dislike into open loathing of the man, the black-hearted butcher. Still, these guards seemed almost superfluous. Blackheart drifted along as if not grounded to the earth, as if his feet did not touch the planks. Harmless as a butterfly, he floated along into his cabin without complaint, though this did nothing to lighten the scowls of the men posted as sentries outside it.

In retrospect, Hunter reckoned, getting stabbed in the back—literally—by Blackheart was a brilliant move on Jade’s part. Really cemented his captaincy, that maneuver had. In case all the talk of treasure and bloodshed and not-being-hung hadn’t secured the loyalty of the men, this surely had. Hunter didn’t know that they’d support Jade over Carson, but Blackheart was well and truly removed as an influence on their fealty.

For his part, Carson was better behaved than Hunter expected when they released him. He was meek, almost, mildly submitting to the indignity of being searched—Hunter took a little extra time with this, relishing the rare chance to humiliate the man he’d watched soar through the ranks without so much as a nod to him, favoring instead the underfed stowaway whelp he’d rescued and, later, the brave highborn whelp he’d spared against all reason. If he never had a chance to exert peculiar mercy over a doe-eyed whelp again, well, Hunter wouldn’t waste too many tears over it. It wasn’t that he was a bad captain, Carson, or that Hunter had ever had reason to complain under him—but it was mighty strange, how good power felt upon his shoulders, how grand a thing it was to be lifted on the outstretched arms of his own crew and listen to the wind from those heights. Why, maybe Hunter could be captain in his own right one day—and wouldn’t _that_ be a fine thing?

When it was abundantly clear to all that Carson concealed no weapons, Hunter let him too out of the brig, and without hesitation he flew to Jade’s side—in his own former cabin, in his own former bed, the new captain shuddered and bled, whiskey applied liberally to his parted lips and gaping wound alike, Briscoe clumsy but determined with the needle. Watching this flight grimly, it occurred to Hunter too late that the very quarters Blackheart skulked creepily in ought to have been his own, what with him being the first mate and all, and he made up his mind to take it up with Jade once his wits had returned to him and he’d stopped drenching all that stepped near him in lifeblood.

Still, it was a touching thing, Hunter felt, watching Carson kneel at Jade’s bedside, clasping his hand and murmuring soothing words to him while Briscoe stitched doggedly on. When the work at last was finished, Jade’s face was pale indeed and damp with sweat, and Carson wiped his brow with a cool cloth like a midwife, fussing with his blankets and pushing a waterskin to his lips and tearing bits of bread and meat into slivers to feed him, as though Jade were a child on its deathbed. It was just as well: by midnight Jade had slipped into fever and Carson laid in the bed beside him, cradling his head against his chest and whispering. The wind whisked through the open windows, bringing the words to Hunter’s ears where he stood watch just inside the drawing room’s door. They were nonsense, as far as Hunter could tell, but still somehow sad and sweet: _mi piedra_ , the captain said again and again into Jade’s sweating scalp. _No me dejes, mi ijada. No dejáme._  


End Notes:

Dun dun dun!!! Tune in next week to discover the True History of Blackheart and Jade. Until then, please accept my gratitude for any review you care to leave.

  
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680>  



	10. Providence by scarredsodeep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today, friends, we sail to war! I don't own AFI and none of this ever occurred. (Sort of: the Spanish did fight Henry Morgan and his brigands for control of Providencia. Whether or not a certain _Elder Hawk_ joined their ranks is not dealt with by my history books.) Read and enjoy, as ever, my lovelies!

 Someone had found him a handsome cane, handled with ivory and jewels and intricately carved, and Jade leaned heavily on it, emerging from the cabin. Hunter watched with beady-eyed interest as he made his painstaking way across the deck. Every angle of his body, every movement, every _twitch_ revealed his pain, but his face showed none of it. Aside from the cane—Hunter suspected he would not even be able to stand without it—he showed no physical weakness; even though Hunter had witnessed it himself, it was hard to believe that this was a man who had spent the night in a boiling fever, sweating and shaking and speaking in tongues. It was harder still to believe that yesterday he had borne a mortal wound, and yet lived. There would be stories about this, Hunter mused, watching Jade’s progress. He had a smile and a word for each of the men, reassuring them that he was still hale, capable of leading them, not so easily felled by small treacherous gestures. The stories would exaggerate, of course—Blackheart Havok with a great long sword would have stuck Jade the Unbloodied clean through, and Jade would have pulled the sword out himself with a black laugh, and bashed in Blackheart’s skull with the dripping blade, and strode bleeding across the deck to laugh into the wind, slowed not a mite by the mortal wound. Men who had seen the cane with their own eyes, men who had seen the sweat of the labor of merely moving across the deck on Jade’s brow, would hear the tales and believe them. Jade the Unkillable. Jade the Unsullied. Unprickable Jade, Hunter thought, letting out a sharp bark of laughter. Sometimes, you old dog, he said to himself, you are a hilarious man.

When Jade made his way to Hunter, whose faith did not need restoring but who appreciated it nonetheless, Hunter showed his teeth in a carnivorous grin. “I been thinking of the songs they’ll write ‘bout you, Cap’n,” he said. He expected Jade’s face to darken, certain that his most recent experience would do nothing for his fondness of the title, but he was gratified instead with a tired, honest smile, different from the arrogant and hearty look he’d worn for the other men.

“Have you now,” Jade murmured, staring out at the sea, at the ships there, at the sunrise. He had survived the night, but they went to war today. There was no saying any of them would survive it. “Tell me, friend, how will they go?”

“You’re the only man Blackheart can’t kill, ain’t ya? Your blood covered this deck and today you’re standing on it—they won’t be able to resist the singing.” Hunter hummed a few bars to demonstrate. Jade laughed, looking pleased, and Hunter was glad he’d done it. “I’ll call it Bloodless Jade, eh? Got a nice ring to it.”

“Makes me sound a coward,” Jade said, frowning playfully. His face was pale and his energy already seemed spent, but he braced himself and breathed the salt air and pushed on nonetheless. Hunter tried a few other of the names he’d thought up and soon both men were laughing; still, he thought better of mentioning Unprickable.

After a time, however, they both sobered. The sun had well risen; the other ships were crawling with men and confusion, being readied for the day’s grim work. Seeming to realize that they both had more important things to attend to, this being their first morning as first mate and captain, Jade grew serious and lurched away to bark orders to the men. Hunter noted Carson hovering a distance away, eyes both critical and concerned, and wondered whether or not the pair of them would be hanged for mutiny when this was done—or whether or not the pair of them might keep the _Hawk_ for their own. Maybe that was what the wind had meant about Jade. But Hunter didn’t think that was it. Jade wasn’t like to try and keep the ship any longer than the charade demanded it. Hunter wouldn’t press the issue, though he’d just as soon not be hanged, if he had any say in it. Still, Carson was watching. He could have been at Jade’s side, helping him move about and give orders, but he wasn’t—the vibrating stillness of him, his unwavering gaze, the fettered anxiety of his form: it was obvious he wanted to. Hunter wondered why he wasn’t. Was it anger? Now that it seemed Jade would live, Carson could be angry with him? Did he fear appearing soft in the eyes of the crew, showing the tenderness of a night spent fretting at Jade’s bedside? Or had Jade asked him not to? It wouldn’t surprise him: Jade made a savvier captain than Hunter would have guessed. Although, what with being stabbed in his first day in office, perhaps his approach to the job was not the best one.

Hunter had the pleasure of overseeing the readying of the ship from an executive vantage point, and checked the cannons himself, making certain the powder barrels were airtight, round shot stacked neatly beside each. The barrels were troublingly low, he noted, and wondered what exactly they would do if the powder or shot ran out. Wetwork, he guessed, grimly pleased at the thought. Hadn’t had a real battle, one involved with principles and justice and all that, since before his days as a pirate. It would be, Hunter decided, turning to bark at Oarless for dragging his feet with the oil, a little like going home.

 

 

 

“You tried to kill me yesterday,” Jade said expressionlessly, leaning casually against the door as if he could stand perfectly well on his own, if he chose to. He could not.

Blackheart stared back, impassive and silent. After a time, he said, “Aye,” and slipped back into surly silence. Jade noted his voice—mellifluous, musical, soft and high. He tried to sound like he ate gravel for breakfast but his vixen’s voice gave him away. Jade didn’t know why he tried to sound frightening: he was already terrifying. The sound of his voice had nothing to do with it. Jade looked at him, really looked at him: sullen, slumped back unceremoniously in a three-legged chair, dark tangles of hair casting his face into shadow. He looked at once comically petulant and explicitly murderous. There wasn’t a man on the ship didn’t think Jade was mad just for stepping into the cabin to speak with him. But he had been so beautiful once, Jade remembered. Sharp and dangerous and starved for life. The hunger, the _fire_ inside him—the day they met came back to Jade unbidden, as it often did. So certain was he that Blackheart did not think of him at all that it embarrassed him, the way the moments returned again and again to his mind, the way he dwelled on them, in them, turning them over in his head endlessly.

But Davey had always made him feel like a fool. Years ago now, a younger Jade in the streets of Port Villaña, loitering belligerently on the docks as they prepared one of his father’s ships for launch. Like common workmen, he and Smith had been sent to help. Usually he enjoyed this task, loading up crates of goods on his father’s ship, overseeing the work of the more dubious crewmen and making corrections when he saw fit. It was better, in any event, than his lessons—endless fencing practice and history lessons and lectures on diplomacy. Worse than those were the social outings, when he was dressed in ostentatious clothing and pressed up close to powdered daughters of other rich Villaña men, eyeing their bosoms in trepidation and, often, distaste. It was expected that he choose one of these unappealing strumpets to make a bride out of, or else apprentice himself to his father’s ship—which he’d not have minded, if it were any man’s ship but his father’s. It was normally a relief from the usual tedium of his life to play at dock worker, but today the activity held no pleasure for him. While Smith chattered with the men and scampered up and down the gangplank, Jade scuffed his fine leather shoes on the wood, reliving insult-by-insult the fight he had had with his father one evening prior.

He hadn’t built up his fortune from scratch and carved out a living from this good-for-nothing Spanish rock, apparently, so that his own flesh and blood could dress in silk and velvet, mocking their expensive pedagogues and refusing to be normal boys, and carry on like dandies. Though Sir Taylor had used the plural in his latest rampage, Smith had been spending his days of late learning the trade of the local blacksmith, and well as eyeing the same man’s daughter; it was obvious that their father had meant Jade and Jade only.

“My own men laugh at me,” Sir Taylor had said, “whenever you show your face on the docks. What a lovely daughter you have, they say to me. This is not _acceptable_!” He had bellowed the last, spit flying brazenly from his wet red lips. “I will see you on the streets before I see you disgrace this family!”

These attacks had been unjustified, Jade had thought. He wore neither silk nor velvet, preferring the plainest of his wardrobe of finery—specifically so he would not stand out on the docks, where he spent most of his time, watching, learning, helping where he could. He also spent a fair amount of time fencing. It was a dull sport and there was no young man in Villaña could rival him for skill, but it was the most useful activity he was allowed to spend time at. He had often tried to secure jobs for himself, in shops or on ships or anywhere, really, but it seemed the only acceptable course for Sir Taylor’s oldest son to take was to enlist in the Spanish navy or follow his father’s footsteps exactly, and Jade wasn’t quite prepared to do either of these things. He neither wanted to die nor be sentenced to months at sea with his father, being unable to decide which of these was the worse fate.  
Jade also did not mock his tutors. Well—this was not strictly true, his latest tutor being an empty-headed old governess with no knowledge of anything, and the one prior being a doddering old man prone to long, empty speeches and falling asleep over lesson books. But before that, there had been one he quite liked. Gregory Keefe, an Englishman, perhaps twenty-five when Jade was a burgeoning fifteen. He had been the most fascinating man Jade had ever met, with a hard, virile body and a halo of golden hair and piercing green eyes. He had also been responsible for the majority of Jade’s education—math, philosophy, science, English lessons, geography, music, and even literature had delighted and impassioned Jade to unforeseen heights when handled by the able young tutor. His favorite lessons had been those with the lute; what hours he could steal he devoted to practice with the stringed instrument, and the wood came to life under his touch. When he played for Gregory, he was careful to make errors, for then his tutor would take his hand and gently rearrange his fingers into the correct positions, sending chills down his spine. But Jade had made the crucial mistake of enjoying something openly; his father had seen that he enjoyed Gregory’s company, that his affection for the man had grown beyond his initial fascination, and that when he read aloud Gregory stood close behind him, stooping, their bodies electric inches apart—Jade could still remember the man’s golden scent, the occasional brush of their hands on the leaves of books, Gregory’s lips near his ear as they together studied Euclid. Being altogether less innocent now, Jade could see that these gestures were not entirely pure—but he still did not forgive his father for dismissing Gregory, because he truly had learned more under that tutelage than anywhere else, and because he could not help but feel a peculiar stirring deep in him at the very thought of his old tutor. It was a feeling that confused him, but he did not realize then how altogether strange it was—how unseemly. He had thought, perhaps, that it was the love of brotherhood, the love that every man felt for his dearest friends. He had thought that all friends were in love with one another, this peculiar sort of love—and he had thought the world more beautiful for it.

Thinking of Gregory always seemed to muddle Jade’s thoughts until they ran like ink and took different shapes altogether. At fifteen Jade had been clumsy and soft—cheeks still round with baby fat even as his limbs elongated, taking on ungainly shapes and lengths. Learning the grace of this new man’s body had taken some time, but that day on the docks Jade felt a man indeed: seventeen years old, taller than his father, with bruised, brooding eyes, a quick smile and quicker tongue, and stubble on his cheeks and chin that he was disproportionately proud of. Catching the reflection of his face in the clear blue sea, Jade leaned out off the pier, pensive. He was a good-looking man, he decided then, if a bit gawky. He did not look too like his father or mother, though the resemblance between he and his brother were strong. He toyed with his shirt collar, studying his reflection intently.

“Careful you don’t fall in,” a small, sweet voice came from his shoulder. Jade was so startled by it that he nearly did. He had wheeled about and been faced with his first sight of Davey: smaller than he, a starved-looking mongrel with tangled black hair and the biggest, most haunting eyes Jade had ever seen. The boy’s eyes went on forever, dark and smooth, and his lips were plump and chapped. He looked like a wild thing with his long dark hair, and he had the whitest skin Jade had ever seen, so fragile that just looking would bruise it. Jade looked into his eyes and absolutely fell in, head over heels, stricken by this little raven of a man, so dark and light and beautiful that it seemed hard to believe he was real.

Davey smiled, then, almost coquettishly, eyes shaded in long dark lashes. Most beggars, Jade would later note, had long passed the point at which they were capable of shyness. “Got any food?” Davey asked him, and it took Jade a moment or two to realize that the angel before him—for Jade could practically see wings unfurling from his back—was actually asking him for something.

“Oh—I—yes,” Jade stammered at last. “Not with me,” he added, as hopeful brown eyes roved over his pockets. “But if you come with me, to my home—”

But already Davey was backing away, shaking his head, frowning. “No, mister,” Davey said, even though it was plain they were near in age. “No thanks.” Though the idea of this creature slipping away from him was almost more than Jade could bear, some distant part of him was glad that Davey was smart, smart enough not to go home with strangers he met on the docks. But at the same time he resolved to bring the boy home with him, to feed him, to stare at him a little longer.

“Please!” Jade said, surprising both of them with his desperation. He felt hot tears pricking at his eyes and did not understand them. “Please, you must come!” he cried. The boy froze, looking around him, frightened—Jade was making a fuss, drawing attention. Beggary was not legal in the King’s Spain, and wasn’t legal in his colonies either. “If you won’t come to my home—let me take you somewhere, please. The market—I can buy you something there, I can—”

Davey’s eyes glittered, calculating even then. “I can buy it for myself,” he said, gauging Jade’s reaction. No man had ever clamored over himself in a rush of generosity; he had never before seen a man distressed by the thought of not feeding him. “Got money?”

Jade bit his lip, torn between urges he didn’t understand and the rules, as he understood them. And then these things fell apart around him, clear as crystal and just as tenuous, shattering into pretty, transparent pieces. This beggar was the most beautiful man he had ever seen, and Jade knew in a heartbeat that he would give him anything—everything. Jade pulled his purse from the tailored pocket of his trousers, aware now that his worst clothes were still riches next to what this man had, and aware also that his finest were still merely rags beside the beauty of his beggar, and pressed the entire thing into Davey’s small, grubby hand. It was heavy with coin and Davey pulled away from the touch, not taking the purse. It fell to the dock between them with too loud a noise and Davey looked around him, eyes wide and frightened. If any of the guards were to see Jade handing over his entire purse, Davey would end up in the stocks or worse—it would look like a robbery. Even realizing this Jade was powerless to reason. “Take it, please,” he said, begging. Davey backed another step away as if he would slip from Jade’s grasp forever, and Jade could not take it. He closed the distance between them in one great long-legged stride, caught the beggar’s hands by the wrist in one large hand, and caught the man’s chin in his other. Not knowing what he was doing and unable to stop it, even as the beggar’s eyes lit up with fear, Jade kissed him; from the collision it emerged that they both were starving, for after a moment’s hesitation the beggar kissed him back so ravenously that it made Jade moan. The kiss was at once too short and lasting lifetimes, and they broke apart dazed, eyes locked as lips had been.

“Come home with me,” Jade beseeched him again, hoarsely. Davey, whose name he did not yet know, nodded wordlessly. Jade picked up the purse with one hand and laced the fingers of the other through Davey’s own and, not caring who saw them, led him home.

There, they had feasted of each other. Jade had given Davey bread and meat and cheese and watched him eat silently, staring unapologetically. Davey, for the most part, had stared back. After he had eaten Jade kissed him again, and it was like nothing he had ever felt before; he thought he would burst, die, live again. He had not known such fire was possible, even as it devoured him, even as it licked and scalded every inch of him—and he had Davey had made love exhaustively, for the next several hours fucking as often as they could, sleeping intermittently, kissing constantly, finishing the bread Davey had not and drinking from a wineskin so as not to leave the room. They spoke little, barely exchanging names, lost in the wonder of one another’s body, in the beauty of their union, of each other. By dawn Jade was certain he had died, that this was heaven, and could not imagine what he had done to deserve it. Not long after sunrise Davey fell asleep in his arms and Jade laid awake a while longer, knowing that he was changed forever, knowing that something had awakened in him—knowing that, now that he had felt fire’s kiss, he would never stop feeling it, would long for it always. And as he drifted off to sleep he had been fool enough to believe that things would go on like this—that they would be happy, that this was a secret they could keep, that no one would dare take heaven away from him.

Not an hour later he had been woken by the door bursting open, by his father and three armed guards spilling in, the old wood flying in splinters. He realized too late how it would all look, the way he had disappeared from the docks after kissing Davey so publicly, and the way they were now, shamelessly naked and entangled, Davey so quickly identifiable as a man—Davey was hauled away still naked, not even allowed to put on clothes. There had been screaming from all quarters and the disgust of the guards and his father were plain. He had tried to fight, he remembered now, clawing at one of the guards, ridiculous and naked and far too thin, just a boy after all, forgetting every moment of his fencing training, and that it had been his father to hit him upside the head with a punch that sent him sprawling, his father that had commanded him to get dressed, his father that had pushed him down as the armed men carted Davey away. And he remembered the look on Davey’s face, how twisted and torn it had been, as if he was bawling without tears or words or sound; he remembered the blood seeping from a cut on Davey’s forehead, and he remembered that he had looked as if he were dying, being hauled away as if he were trash, as if Jade were the only one who could see he was an angel—he was precious.

Jade remembered all of it, looking at Blackheart now, as he had remembered it time and again. Every second of it—every broiling second of the sex, every touch and tingle and caress, and then the rage and humiliation and shame, the way he had not been able to save Davey. He had been on his father’s ship when it sailed that day, and Davey had been—he did not know where Davey had been. No one would tell him. He had never found out. He had loved Davey the first moment he saw him, and he did not know if he had ever felt as whole as he had while Davey’s fire consumed him—could not say for certain if even Carson’s heat burned as deep as that had.

All of this spilled through his thoughts as he looked at Blackheart. It was a different fire that flickered around the man’s edges now. The beautiful boy he had been was unrecognizable. It could have been a different face altogether for all the similarities it held. Looking at him now, it was easy for Jade to believe that the man did not even remember. Jade wondered if Blackheart ever knew how broken his heart had been, when upon seeing his first love again he had been met with a look of blank disgust. He would not wonder if Davey was angry, if Davey blamed him—but then, he had been so certain that Davey had felt it too. He could not guess what Blackheart might feel. Blackheart, perhaps, felt nothing.

“You tried to kill me,” Jade repeated, wonderingly now, because he simply did not understand how or why the event had transpired.

Blackheart just stared. There were no answers here, Jade decided bitterly. There were no answers anywhere. That was what his life was: a great void of answers, gaping after every faltering question.

“I need you today,” Jade said, sighing, shifting his weight onto his cane and straightening up. The knife wound, still so fresh, blazed with agony—wounds being the only kind of fire Blackheart could share with him anymore. “We’re going to war, and I need—I need to be able to trust you not to try again, not while the battle rages. Can I do that?”

By means of response, Blackheart spit at his feet. “I’ll see you dead,” he said evenly, not blinking, staring deadly into Jade’s eyes.

“Be as that may,” Jade said, voice stronger, some of the anger that had long lived within him, the anger of endless unanswered questions, seeping into his tone, “there will be plenty of other men to kill today. Can I trust you, Davey?”

At the name Blackheart’s eyes flickered, but only briefly. It was as if it was a name he had heard before, long ago, and was trying to remember the face of the man—an old acquaintance, maybe—it belonged to. “No,” Blackheart said coolly, simply, without apology. “But then, you ain’t got much choice.”

This was, Jade wagered, the closest thing to an agreement they were going to strike. “Fine,” he said, voice dripping with dislike, and turned on heel and strode proudly from the room, feeling Briscoe’s careful stitches tearing out from his skin as he did so, too stiff and angry to put weight on the cane until he was out of the cabin. Once the door had closed behind him, he leaned on the cane so hard he near collapsed; his breath came in great gasps, the pain unbearable. “Let him out,” he managed to instruct Blackheart’s guards, this morning a sunburnt Irishman and a broad-featured Caribbean native he did not well know. They looked at him like he was mad, and Jade thought that perhaps they were right. “Let him out!” Jade barked more forcefully. “When the fighting starts, I want Blackheart Havok on this deck, doing what he does best.”

Hoping, of course, that what Blackheart Havok did best was killing other men—and not him.

 

 

 

Adam did not care much for the plan. He wasn’t sure what Jade had pitched to the men, exactly, to make them so gung-ho about it—but the plan Jade had actually hammered out with the Spanish admiral played to the strengths of each ship involved, and put the crew of the _Hawk_ in exponentially more danger than the soldiers who had signed up to be killed and were paid well for their impending sacrifice.

The behemoth warships were far too heavy and unwieldy to risk the shallows, even the relatively maneuverable ones of Providencia’s port. The _Hawk_ , light and swift if listing noticeably from Blackheart’s clumsy care, could navigate them much more smoothly. She would sail under Jade’s command—Adam tried hard to divorce his gut reaction from his thoughts—into the bay, defenseless, and approach one of the much larger ships moored there. They would empty their cannons into it and sail away, hoping the wind favored them, that they were fast enough, that Morgan’s men gave chase—and they would flee into a trap, the privateers following. Once the two ships were neutralized, the admiral opined, the port itself would be easy to take. The most able men would have been taken with their ships; the rest would be slaves and peasant rabble, likely grateful to see the return of decent men to their shores.

The captain could not argue. Tactically, it was their best option—the galleons might well neutralize themselves in the shallows, and prove far more deadly for the fleet’s other ships than for the enemy’s. Outside of the bay, in open sea, Morgan’s ships would be outnumbered, one already damaged from the _Hawk_ ’s assault, and their smaller size and greater manueverability would not be enough to save them. The _Hawk_ would hedge them in, driving them again and again into the deadly V of Spanish ships, and they would either surrender or be destroyed.

But there was something Adam knew that the admiral did not. There was another ship—maybe on the other side of the island, maybe hidden by a bluff much the way the Spanish fleet now was. They would not be able to reach it quickly, nor bring it into the battle with much haste, and would still be outnumbered two to one—but Adam knew a thing or two about the _Starswept_ , and she wouldn’t be easy to sink, and she never surrendered. By now he was certain that his and Havok’s escape had been well noted; if the ships in the bay had not been given over to his pursuit, the _Starswept_ might already be manned and prowling, hunting him. He did not think that Henry Morgan would let him slip away without a fight—he and Havok had killed many of Morgan’s men. It was too great an insult to let lie.

Whether it was the black look on his face or the uncertainty of his position on the ship—not quite prisoner and not quite captain—the crew avoided him that morning as they went about their work. This suited Carson fine: whatever Jade’s reasoning for his mutiny, the men were downright perfidious and had no excuses for backing his command. Doing so had saved their lives, but could the lie not have worked another way? Couldn’t they have ridiculed Jade for his attempt and said that no, their merchant captain was ashore, trying to establish a trading agreement? Adam didn’t see why it wouldn’t have worked just as well. When Jade spoke of it, it was to equivocal effect: Adam was taken in by it and wanted to believe, but too much was unsaid, too much left on faith, too much without satisfactory explanation. He brooded over this, robbed of his usual pleasure of barking orders when he was in an ill mood, and tried again to sort out his feelings over the matter. He couldn’t see a way around it, in his head—he’d have to kill Jade, make an example of him. The kindest he could do was maroon him on an island somewhere. Starvation was a cruel death, but then at least there was hope of a rescue—of survival. But bloodshed or drowning, a bloated corpse floating out from the ship, would certainly make his point clearer. He had a reputation to uphold, after all, and Jade had done it enough damage already.

As clear as it seemed that he must end Jade’s life, however, the captain watched with sharp eyes every move Jade made, the painful halting progress of his body, the grey color to his face. He was overexerting himself, straining too far, and endangered his life by it. Adam wanted to rush to his side, order him to bed, take him up in his arms and force him to lie down, to rest. He wanted to fuss over him, to nurse him back to health, to spend tender moments at his bedside stroking his back and cleaning his wound. And all these instincts, all these pangs that overtook him as he watched Jade’s arduous path wind around the ship, abuzz with activity and tension—he couldn’t make sense of them. This was a man who had betrayed him, a mutineer, who he would surely sentence to death. Should he not hope that Jade’s wound turned black and gangrenous, that his work was done for him? That his unpleasant task might be made easier by the sweet stench of rot in Jade’s flesh, to know that as he walked the plank he was already a dead man. Yet Adam did not wish for this.

Another concern was Havok. There was not a man on this ship anymore who he could trust, who was his friend, who he didn’t owe retribution to, not even his first mate. But why should he mistrust Havok? Why should he track his every move suspiciously and burn angrily at the thought of Jade letting him walk free—letting him once again be armed? Havok was the only loyalist left on the ship. What he had done, his attempt on Jade’s life, had been the only act of loyalty to Adam performed on the _Hawk_. Havok should be given a medal for trying to take Jade’s life, not punished. But to punish him Adam dearly wanted nonetheless.

And of course there was Mad Hunter. As the men hauled up anchor and made ready to sail, to embark on their deadly errand, Adam cast his eyes on this particular thorn of the many in his side. The words Hunter had spoken to him were troubling. Adam had always taken his mad loyalty for granted, thinking the man one of his most trusted and capable officers. It was true that Hunter had been denied promotion under at least two captains that Adam was aware of, but it had never seemed to bother him—he had seemed happiest where he was. And it was easy to justify his lack of advancement: the quality of his service aside, he was absolutely batshit.

But then, maybe they all were. Why else would they choose this life? Part of each of them belonged to the sea; otherwise they, like all other sane men, would choose a dry bed and a warm woman and a stationary place to call home. They all had fallen in love with the sea and been driven mad by it—there was no other explanation for their choices. As long as the sea held part of a man, he could not be whole, could not be sane, because he belonged to an untamed, merciless mistress, and his only certainty was that death would find him. Was Hunter any more mad than the rest of them? Than Carson himself?

The mistake he had made, Adam wagered, stomach turning queasily as the _Hawk_ glided ghost-like away from her Spanish escort and made directly for the bay, at daybreak and in plain sight—not how any pirate would choose to make an attack, nor any man who much prized life at all—was to believe it was his captaincy and the _Hawk_ Hunter was loyal to. He could see a clearer picture now: Hunter was loyal to the wind, a capricious entity at best and no friend of Adam’s, lately. If the wind whispered to him to be loyal, he would be as loyal as one’s own shadow; but if in the next moment the wind whispered something else, he would slit Adam’s throat without remorse, without hestitation, completely certain that it was a necessary and righteous action. That kind of piety, that kind of faith, was bone-chilling, even in the first blistering rays of heat from the rising sun. All these years Hunter had served him true, but it was the goddamned _wind_ he took his orders from. Adam had made a mistake to let this loyalty continue, not to earn it in his own right with flashy titles and glittering prizes.

They reached the mouth of the bay and sailed straight into it, brazen, the wind whipping pleasantly in their sails. Adam wished that it would tell _him_ what to do, wished that anyone would. Any man now who looked out over the bay from Providencia’s ruddy avenues would see the _Hawk_ , navy sails billowing, aimed straight and true. He hoped sincerely that Sir Morgan wasn’t looking.

“Don’t just stand there, man!” Oarless barked into his ear suddenly, and Adam wondered distractedly when John Oarless had received authority above his own, authority enough to give him orders. “Man the cannons, tend the sails, go below and fortify the hold where she’s been punctured—but don’t just _stand_ there!” Still, it was what he’d asked for, wasn’t it? He specifically remembered wishing that anyone at all would tell him what to do. Well, if wishes were coming true now, he ought to take this one graciously, in good faith.

“Aye, sir,” he said, the very words from his lips draining the blood from Oarless’ boyish face. He sprang away to see to one of his new tasks because Oarless could stutter out the words to take it back, to apologize. If this was who the wind sent him—if we were believing, now, that all madness being equal the wind might offer him some guidance in its own esoteric way—then this was damn well who he’d obey.

 

End Notes:

A little look into the Javey past! What do you think? We'll get Blackheart's side of the story in a few chapters. Next week: battle!

 

  
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680>


	11. Providence by scarredsodeep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> War! Next chapter, intrigue. I don't own the boys and none of this occurred; please, please enjoy it!

 

The _Elder Hawk_ crested above the waves, rising and falling handsomely, charging direct for the outermost ship. It was an old military ship, smaller and lighter than the galleons, and would be impossible to overtake on the open sea, but its weapons were outdated and its hull heavily barnacled. In the bay, defenseless and unmanned, she was a sitting duck. As the merchant’s ship cut across the water, Admiral Gutierrez peered at the enemy ship with his spyglass, searching for signs of life. It seemed suspicious that the outermost ship would be unmanned, particularly when the run-in Puget had described to him should have had Morgan’s scum on high alert. He suspected it was a trap, but didn’t know what kind. Packing the ship’s hold with gunpowder awaiting a cannon’s spark would be a fine trick indeed, and cripple if not destroy the _Hawk_ , but as a tactical man himself Gutierrez would not sacrifice a ship for this ploy if his fleet numbered but two. As far as Morgan and his lot knew, they had only one ship to fear—they could take the _Hawk_ with the ordnance on their two vessels easily, and find their fleet increased by one half. Still, even if he could he would not recall the _Hawk_. Gutierrez was a god-fearing man, a Catholic, and dealing with men like these cast shadows on his immortal soul. Further, his orders from the King were explicit: Isla de Providencia would be his, even if it meant conscripting civilians and sending them into the maw of death.

He shifted his gaze from the deserted deck of the _Red Dreamer_ and zeroed in on the _Hawk_ herself. The sails were looking a bit ragged, dark navy blue snapping finely in the wind, and he wondered again what sort of honorable merchant flew blue sails. He hadn’t asked Puget—he seemed to recall mention of a ship with sails blue as the sea at storm, and couldn’t remember which ship it had been. Perhaps it had been the Puget trade ships that flew them, though Sir Taylor, presumed dead and God rest him, would have been an arrogant man indeed to mark his trade vessels distinct and ripe for pirates. Perhaps that was the reason: from a distance, without the spyglass and in the morning sun, the sails indeed looked black. It might be enough to protect the ship from pirates, if they thought the ship was one of their own. Still, Gutierrez couldn’t entirely dismiss the suspicion that the _Hawk_ was crewed by criminals and convicts and, if she met her end in service to the King, it would be a noble death for every man aboard. Even if he’d killed them, the Admiral could be assured that he had done so in such a way as to levy the burdens on their immortal souls.

The deck of the _Elder Hawk_ was a blur of activity. In the middle of it all stood Puget, shouting orders and waving his arm, the other holding tight to a cane that he had not used yesterday but plainly needed today. This was curious to Gutierrez, but he had detected a slight limp in his dealings with the man, and he knew too well how temperamental old injuries could be. For perhaps the hundredth time Gutierrez made up his mind to accept Puget’s story at face value. It could well enough be true and, no matter how ragged the crew, Sir Taylor’s youngest son had been every inch the gentleman, possessed of all the courtesy and charm of a highborn upbringing. They had given Gutierrez no reason to doubt their tale so he chose again not to. Some of his officers had questioned his decision to press the civilian ship into service this way, when he had enough men to simply commandeer it. The will of God and the King alike supported him in his every action, but Gutierrez still preferred to avoid violence when he could. Why make more enemies when there was an opportunity to make friends? To quell the doubts of his men he had allowed Captain Puget to prove his quality through bravery, through being the first into the fight, through having ample opportunity to at least attempt an escape and not taking it.

As he watched, the _Hawk_ drew within firing range of the _Red Dreamer_ and wheeled about. There was a moment’s pause, untouched and glimmering gold, and everything was still—every man across his five ships held his breath—and as one they exhaled, the six cannons of the _Hawk_ ’s starboard side firing in succession, blasts staggered by half-second. The side of the _Red Dreamer_ exploded in debris, wood splintering like smoke, ship foaming with destruction. As the haze cleared, he saw Puget’s arm come down as he screamed to his blast-deafened men, and the cannons were loaded again. They had not time to fire them, however; even as the men sprang into action a great roar came from the _Dreamer_ , which had been punctured but not suffered any crippling damage. Suddenly men rushed from below deck, seizing ropes and leaping from the gunwales—the _Dreamer_ was swarming with buccaneers, the air afire with their cries, and the smoke of gunfire rose from the ships, the sounds from here only the tinny popping of a child’s toy. It had been a trap indeed, Gutierrez thought as he watched tiny men—ant-sized from this distance—swing across the open sea, clinging to ropes, leaping from their own ship onto the _Hawk_. As if outraged, four of the six cannons fired, one ball grazing the _Dreamer_ ’s mast before dropping through the deck. There was another explosion of wood and splinters; the _Dreamer_ began to wheel, ramming into the _Hawk_. It seemed for a moment that the plan would fail; then the _Hawk_ broke away, wind shifting to fill her sails, and she pulled free from the _Dreamer_ , making for the mouth of the bay. Behind her, the _Red Dreamer_ pulled about to give chase. Near the shore, the shallows frothed with men, some rowing in boats and others swimming, all in a rush to board their other ship, the _Winds of Fortune_ , and join the fray.

Gutierrez lowered his spyglass and signaled to the soldier at the prow of his longboat. “Back to _el Conquistador_ , I think,” he said. Once he had returned to his ship they would be blind to the action, tucked out of view, but he would not be caught in a longboat when Morgan’s bastards drew upon them. The boy put his back into his work, rowing for both their lives. Their attack, then, had been expected—Morgan had set a trap. When they were near enough, he began shouting orders up to the ships that would be the pincers of their attack, the _Galecia_ and the _Galestra_. Henry Morgan was a dangerous man, and from here on out, they would have to be careful. Their element of surprise only lasted until they were seen; if the _Dreamer_ and the _Winds of Fortune_ chose to turn back into the bay, not even the _Hawk_ would be in position to cut them off quickly enough. In the open sea, with room to maneuver, their victory was assured. The English must not be allowed to retreat. It was fortunate, then, Gutierrez thought with a general’s grin, that the King’s navy was possessed of the means to prevent it. They would have to move quickly.

 

 

 

It was like dancing. The grimmest of dances, perhaps, but a dance nonetheless—Hunter whirled, wind hissing, and sunk his blade into the neck of the man behind him, feeling the edge bite into the bones of his clavicle. Blood poured like rain, adding to the sheen of it Hunter wore already, and the man’s legs gave beneath him as he died. Hunter planted a boot on his shoulder, for leverage, and jerked the curved sword free. Feeling the kiss of the axe a moment before it happened, he ducked his head and rolled, lashing out with the cutlass. It buried itself happily into the guts of his axe-wielding attacker; the follow-through eviscerated him, his insides red and reeking. Like confetti, Hunter thought, and laughed, laughed at the feel of blood on his skin and the sword in his hand, laughed at the pleasure of killing to defend, to reclaim, in the name of a man smiled on by god, laughed at the pleasure of killing.

He spied a new opponent advancing from the aft, and lunged to meet his fresh partner in the dance. They parried back and forth, observing the proper footwork and form, did a pretty waltz on the slick and sticky deck, tangled now and sloshing with dead men and the sea, and when they twirled, blades clashing, it was in synchronization fine enough to please the peerage. Hunter leaned back at the tip of the man’s sword scraped his belly, catching on the loose fabric of his shirt, and then slashed forward himself. But the man faltered, forgot his steps, and he too was opened rib to rib, spilling blue snakes from his belly. Hunter pursued, ending the dance with a bow, pushing the tip of his cutlass into the man’s heart, ending it quickly. The flesh was so soft, caving in like a rotten vegetable, and such a putrid smell came forth—Hunter wondered if they were men at all, to die so foully, so fast, like something spoiled.

He cast his eyes about the deck in the blood fever, searching for his next dance partner, and saw that Morgan’s men were men indeed, not vegetables—there were few left now, for no more than a score had boarded in the chaos and the _Hawk_ ’s crew numbered near three times that—for his own men, his own crew lay still on the deck, just as bloody, and those that yet fought were not all successful. Finding no dancer unengaged Hunter let out a roar and crashed across the deck to where a dark-skinned privateer was at the point of cutting John Oarless’ throat. The poor boy was at the helm, trying to sail the damn ship; in all the frenzy, too few men were employed at the sails. The rigging flapped loosely, ropes cut or let slip, and Hunter realized that the _Hawk_ only limped along, the _Red Dreamer_ gaining, in spite of the bounty of the wind.

“To yer stations, men!” Hunter yelled at the top of his voice, but few in the heat of battle listened. He cut the legs of Oarless’ attacker out from under him and stomped on the man’s hand, lest he had ideas about picking up anything save his own detached limbs, gratified at the way the bones crunched beneath his boot heel. “That’s the way, Oarless! Steady as she goes!” he screamed into Oarless’ ear before bounding away again, like a bloody puppy, to find another man to cut down.

There were only six left to find. By the time he had finished with the first three, the others had been dispatched by their own partners, and not without reluctance he wiped his sword on his shirt, breathing hard, and gave a nod. “Right, then!” he yelled. “Enough lollygagging, you bastard lot! And someone clear the deck before we trip ourselves up!” Already brave seabirds were circling the mast, their cries cruel as they eyed the bounty on the deck. The sooner they shoveled the bits of meat and men overboard, the better. It was always unsettling to see a man’s eyes eaten out of his head, be he unknown enemy or familiar friend. Hunter had no great love for sea birds. To him, each one was an albatross.

He pushed his cutlass wetly back into his belt and looked about him, marking causalities. They had lost only eight men, he quickly surmised, and none had been particular friends of his, so it was a good morning’s work. He dearly hoped they’d get to take a ship today; he loved nothing quite as much as jumping into the open sky between two ships, clinging tight to a rope that bit his hands, hollering madly and buffeted by the wind, landing boots first on some new ship with glorious killing ahead of him and nothing but possibility on the horizon.

With his eyes he marked Blackheart, working furiously at a sail, and Carson helping clear the deck of bodies, looking exhilarated, cheeks rosy and hands red with blood. He did not, however, see the simulacrum captain, and this was troubling. It would be a damn shame if he had died already, with the whole day of war-making ahead of them yet. Good captains lived to toast to their victories, after all. Maybe no one had explained that to Jade. Maybe, wounded as he was, the melee had been too much for him—he could have been overtaken. He could have fallen.

No sooner, however, had Hunter cast a more critical eye to the bodies he’d already visually catalogued than the wooden thud of Jade’s cane on the deck caught his ear. Jade limped toward him, looking a little worse for the wear, out of breath. At first Hunter feared his throat had been cut for it was drenched with red, and half his face too, but as he drew nearer Hunter saw that only some of the blood was Jade’s, and that from a small gash just above his hairline. Head wounds were tricky things, of course, but with a glance Hunter decided that this wasn’t the tricky sort and Jade would be fine. He gripped the cane tightly in one hand and his sword dangled from the other, shining with red. Hunter was glad to see Jade had joined in the killing. It was important, in battle, for a man to look up and see his captain beside him, bloody and determined and hacking away, undaunted. “Bloodless Jade!” Hunter cried, hugging Jade tightly with one arm in a celebratory, jocular way, careful of the wound in his back. “Glad to see you made it through.”

Even as they spoke the _Hawk_ surged onward; the _Dreamer_ was not far behind, churning in their wake, the bodies they dumped being sucked under the ship they’d served on. Cries from the boy in the crow’s nest told him that the _Fortune_ was at last manned and moving, and Hunter could have scolded that crew himself for being so slovenly. The _Dreamer_ , at least, was taking on water. Their small cannons had not done much damage, but Hunter thought that the wind might be a boon to them—in its favorable thrashing he saw the mainsail of the _Dreamer_ leaning sickly to one side, nicked by a cannon blast. It wouldn’t take overmuch encouragement to take it the rest of the way down. The sails were still full—it was a risk in winds like these, but without the mainsail the _Dreamer_ could not hope to pursue the smaller, lighter _Hawk_.

Jade nodded grimly, face greyer than before. “This had best work,” he muttered to Hunter, swaying ever so slightly. “If they see the Spanish and run, then all this is for nothing. The damage to the hull, the men lost—”

Hunter stopped this talking at once, clapping his grimy red hand over Jade’s mouth before he could condemn them any further. “Battle ain’t over yet,” Hunter grunted. “Battle’s only beginning. Start counting your losses now and the day will end you.”

Jade might have responded to this decidedly sage advice and he might not have. At that moment they cleared the bay and the boom swung, shifting the sails. The rudder groaned beneath the ship and Jade frowned to hear it, plainly wondering just how bad the damages were, which was even less constructive than counting them. But they had cleared the bay and the respite was over. The ship groaned, maybe, but turn she did, and the wind with her, and now they sped towards the great jutting wall of the bluff, behind which the Spanish navy waited.

 

 

 

“Steady, men!” Jade yelled, clinging tight to the rail as the ship pitched violently. “Harpoon!” one of the men screamed, leaning perilously over the gunwale to see what had hit the _Hawk_. The sound had been too big to believe, even to his cannon-deaf ears, and he knew that the ship had been harpooned in a weak spot, the hull punctured. Worse was that the rope had held—as the _Hawk_ tried to steady herself, he felt the sick list, the pulling. The _Dreamer_ was pulling just as hard as the wind was and he knew the harpoon, if torn free this way, was liable to take a large chunk of the hull with it. Worse, the _Hawk_ was tilting into the pull, deck and ship itself going sideways. Jade cursed everything, from his spinning head to the blood-slick deck to the damned Spanish admiral who’d put him up to this, and hobbled as quickly as he could to where the _Hawk_ had been struck, on the port side, direct into the lower hold. What kind of harpoon was shot with enough power to pierce the hull of a ship? Watching the straining boards and hearing his ship moan, Jade decided for the first time than this Henry Morgan fellow was a truly evil man. The harpoon, three-pronged and shot from a sort of cannon mounted on the _Dreamer_ ’s deck, had been _designed_ for this—for ship hunting. The thing was large enough, the resultant hole in his ship was large enough, that he’d wager it would shred any whale they fired it on. No, this was a tool for taking ships. What bastards the English were, he thought to himself. What cowards.

“We’ve got to cut the rope,” he decided and, knowing it to be true, repeated the order at a yell. “Sever the rope!” he hollered. Every man not crucial to the movement of the ship left his post, drawing pistols, and began to shoot. But it was an impossible target and the _Hawk_ shrieked as a board began to lift on the hull. Jade swore gratuitously under his breath and knew it wouldn’t be enough. Someone would need to climb out on the thing. Someone would need to cut it. They didn’t have time or shot enough for this—the target was small, and moving, and the _Hawk_ was veering off her course. If the _Dreamer_ twisted them enough, they’d come around the bluff all wrong; the English would see the trap long before they entered it. Worse, the _Winds of Fortune_ was picking up speed, a narrow sloop with peculiar sails, built for speed and not much else. They were not yet in view of the Spanish fleet; there would be no rescue.

“Go below!” Jade yelled out, spit flying from his mouth as he did, and he knew he must look a madman, pushed over the edge by battle-frenzy. “Cut the rope!” A handful of grim-faced men followed this order at top speed, each knowing that even success at this task might kill them. Well—Jade couldn’t worry about the life of each man if he wanted to preserve the lives of the rest, if he wanted to save the _Hawk_ herself. He hadn’t expected battle to be like this, he realized dully as a yelp and a splash told him the first effort at cutting the rope had been a poor one. He hadn’t imagined that war meant killing his own men, not just the enemy. He leaned over the rail, watching the man flail and drown in the ship’s wake, hearing the slow groan of giving wood. The _Dreamer_ was closing in, close enough that this man might well be sucked under. But what could be done? They could throw down a rope, Jade thought dazedly, as the unlucky man’s head disappeared below the waves and didn’t come up again. They could—they could save him.

A cry rang out and the _Hawk_ jerked again; another harpoon, he thought with a wave of nausea, but when he looked he saw it was not the case—the rope was cut. The _Hawk_ was free. The enemy was chewing up their wake. “Hard to starboard!” Jade bellowed and the _Hawk_ turned sharply, plunging deep and leaning hard—he could feel it, feel the imbalance where she was taking on water—and it seemed for a moment she would roll; but then she steadied herself and they edged around the bluff, and the Spanish ships were there, waiting. The _Hawk_ made straight for the back of the V, to slip between two ships there and, for a moment out of harm’s way, to tend to the ship’s injuries. The _Red Dreamer_ was much too close behind them; she had no time to turn back. The _Fortune_ came round the bend as the first volley of cannon fire shredded the _Dreamer_ ’s hull—the smaller ship charged, its own cannons firing a sharp report, lighting up the bright sails with red bursts of fire. Perhaps the _Fortune_ ’s captain had lost his head and meant to take on five ships unaccompanied, or perhaps he only wanted to provide an opportunity for the _Dreamer_ to escape, but the opportunity for retreat was taken quickly—a powder keg, fuse blazing, fell from the deck of the _Galestra_ and exploded just beneath the surface, sending great shock waves to rock the ships nearest but seeming to cause no damage, until Jade noticed the fire—it spread quickly, following a streak of oil along the waves, and in a few breath’s time was a near-solid wall of fire closing the Spanish V, boxing the ships in. The Spanish began to close in on them, tightening the formation, as the _Hawk_ slipped free. Her job now was to patch up those holes that would sink them and sail hard, making sure to prevent either ship from slipping through the Spanish web.

That was the plan, anyway. But Jade looked up, at the horizon, and saw instead a monstrosity. It was the largest and most terrible ship he’d ever seen, larger by half than the behemoth Spanish galleons, with three decks, four rows of portholes and cannons, great black sails and, snapping in the wind above it all, an English flag. A giant cauldron on the bow of the ship blazed with pitch, the kind that kept burning even if it landed in water, and the woman carved on the ship’s prow was ringed in smoke, in red deadly fire. This ship would not even need to fire on them; it could merely ram the _Hawk_ , split her in two, and sail onwards.

“Can we run?” Jade asked, voice little more than a hoarse echo. But he knew the answer before the asking: the _Hawk_ would not make it far without repairs. Each wave, each rise and fall of the ship, and gallons and gallons of water rushed through the holes the _Dreamer_ had made.

“We can’t run,” Carson said in his ear, and he was surprised he had not noticed the man stood there sooner. “We’ll—” and his voice too sounded hoarse—“we’ll have to board her. Keep the men too distracted to sink us til one of the galleons can break away.”

“It’s the biggest ship I’ve ever seen,” Jade said weakly. Even as the thing surged towards them, only moments now from firing range, he found himself unable to give the order to meet her, to board her. It seemed without question that the _Hawk_ would be sunk, that every man that climbed up on that foul deck would die there. His wound pained him mightily; his head swam. He leaned onto Carson’s chest under this premise, and Carson clasped an arm around his waist, for a blessed moment—for their last moment—holding him.

“It’s the _Starswept_ ,” Carson breathed into his ear. Jade’s skin crept with gooseflesh. He shivered.

 

 

 

Blackheart scrabbled up the side of the ship like he was born to, pulling a rope ladder behind him. He reached the gunwale with his sword flashing: the two men waiting there to cut him down were dead before he even swung a leg over. His vision was red with haze and around him, the men who had already gained the deck were dying, outnumbered five to one. Even if the entire crew made it to the deck of Morgan’s ship—and they wouldn’t—they’d still be outnumbered. The blood already on his hands had dried into a flaking brown film and he wanted nothing more than to dive into the killing, cutting into any flesh and bone within his reach, friend or foe, hacking the life out of men in runny red chunks, but he held himself back. He studied the deck quickly, eyes flashing, and spied the man he sought quickly enough—red coat, dripping jewels, curly black wig. He cut his way across the deck, moving faster than thought and with less mercy, eyes never leaving his quarry even as he whirled and spun and killed, pulling pistols off corpses to shoot with his left hand while he sliced and parried with his right. The handles grew slicker and slicker in his hands, the gunpowder burning his eyes, and all around him was a fog of gunsmoke and blood and he felt like a man again, watching their faces, watching them fall, seeing the life in the bastards around him fade to nothing, the efficient emptying bodies of blood by stuttering, fluttering heartbeats, and by the time the killing was done, every heart on deck would be as black and still as his own—

A flash of red, of gold, and Morgan was in his sights again. Blackheart came back to himself, at least a little, and redirected his swath of carnage to aim again for the knighted bastard. A man stepped in front of him, obscuring his view—a man twice his size with skin like coal, arms wet with blood up to the elbow as if he’d just torn out a heart, blood smeared on his face like he’d eaten it, huge flat hammer in his hand. The man grunted, taking Blackheart’s measure, and Blackheart nodded slightly, accepting the wordless challenge. Like most of the crucial exchanges of Blackheart’s life, this one passed without the need for speech: everything that needed to be said was encompassed in the man’s grunt and his answering nod, in the eyes of the other man, the set of his shoulders, the way he stood. It had been the same with the merchant. This time, however, it was a different agreement had been reached—with his nod he had given the vicious-looking giant, half-clad and with several golden teeth, permission to kill him. _You are worthy of ending me_ , his nod had said. _So I’ll let you try it_. He did not give many men this permission. Most were lesser men, to be cut down and left, blood and salt mingling.

The giant swung, a great sweeping blow, the kind that likely dashed the skulls of most men at once. Blackheart, however, was not most men—he ducked under the blow, small and light on his feet, and snicked the back of the man’s leg with his blade. The man roared and stomped, smashing down with his hammer, and Blackheart threw himself backwards, landing splayed on his back. Only a leaking corpse saved his head from colliding with the deck, costing him precious seconds of orientation and sight that might have ended him. The giant took his hammer in both hands and swung it over his head, trying once more to crush Blackheart’s skull, and Blackheart was disappointed. For all his size and gore, this man was profoundly uncreative. He was beginning to wonder if there was any man aboard Henry Morgan’s ship could give him a real challenge.

Blackheart turned a somersault as the man’s blow landed, crunching the bones of the body Blackheart had laid on. Blackheart found himself in a smooth brown pocket of the man’s most precious organs, and with a quick flick of his wrist opened the man’s femoral artery near his groin. It was a tiny cut only, when he was in a position to open the man’s entirety, but he knew the fight was over. The man stood, uncurling his body up, bellowing at Blackheart who crouched within; but Blackheart kept his sword at his side. Even as the man mustered another great sweeping strike, Blackheart turned his back and coolly walked away. The man let out a vast roar and, before he could swing, dropped to the deck. Once that artery was severed, a man had fifteen seconds left to live, maybe less if his heart was pumping hard, if he’d already lost some blood. Blackheart turned to look distastefully down at the body, but only for a moment—the battle still raged around him. Men still clashed and shouted and died on all sides, and as a ball shot whizzed lethally past him he snapped back to attention, launching himself at the man who had fired. Still, he kept his eyes on Morgan, drawing ever nearer. They had business yet between them, they two.

 

 

 

At last the _Gloria del Rey_ noticed their plight, and her captain broke formation to sail to their aid. The wreckage of the _Red Dreamer_ smoldered, sinking, in the center of the galleons, framed by the fierce wall of fire. The _Fortune_ was flanked with a ship on either side, its small deck pouring with Spanish soldiers, its crew fighting tenaciously but slowly being obliterated nonetheless, unable to hold back the tide. In the meantime, however, Adam’s ship faced a perilous fate: the _Hawk_ burned, badly battered by the _Dreamer_ and the _Starswept_ ’s first volley and now scorched with pitch. The fire was spreading slowly but there wasn’t much time, Adam knew, to stop it—pitch fire was near impossible to douse, and his ship was made of wood. What little crew remained aboard raced with bailing pans, but pitch would burn even water. There were a veteran or two left aboard, and Adam was relieved to see one of them hauling a great sack of flour, which would stifle the flames more effectively. Still, the _Hawk_ did not have much time left, and his crew had dwindled badly. The climb up the side of the _Starswept_ had afforded too many opportunities for the men above to throw down pitch, shoot at them, cut their ropes and ladders. Those that made it on the deck were already shaken and harried, in no kind of formation, and in small straggling waves. They were also, he noted grimly and often, hopelessly outnumbered. He looked about the deck of the _Starswept_ for what was left of his crew. He did not see Mad Hunter but could hear him singing and cackling; he had earlier noted Havok in the fray, but did not see him now. He looked for but did not find Jade, looked for and did not find Henry Morgan. His stomach turned at the thought of Jade, wounded and feverish, trying to make it up one of the rope ladders, assailed from above, but battle was not time to fret for any fate but one’s own, so he turned his attention back to the killing. He was surprised not to see Morgan on the deck. He knew they had only been allowed to get close enough to board because Morgan enjoyed toying with his victims, particularly the helpless ones. He was sure that they had caused a surprising amount of carnage and would not be allowed to live much longer. The approach of the _Gloria del Rey_ would, he hoped, provide distraction enough to let them escape—what few were left of them, at least.

“Back to the _Hawk_!” he screamed to his men. They had no hope of taking the _Starswept_ by force and they knew it, and those that could fought their way back to the ladders. A few jumped overboard and likely died upon hitting the water, a long way down. The circumstances of his return to the _Starswept_ were far from auspicious, but god, it was good to stand on her deck again. He’d almost forgotten how big she was. She made a bigger target, it was true, and moved slow; but heavy as she was, she was agile, and quick enough when the wind favored her. She was an armada all in her own. Very few ships and very few ports would be able to repel an attack from a ship this size, and, Adam was convinced, she was unsinkable. She wasn’t the _Hawk_ —would never match her for speed or grace or utility, but was an iconoclast of firepower. The _Starswept_ was the type of ship that no one should have been able to take away from him—ever.

And yet, Adam reminded himself. She had been his first ship, his first love, and he very much did _not_ find her a fitting place for his death. He had stayed in the fight long enough. The men who could make it off the ship had. It was time to go. Adam stabbed the man nearest him in the chest with a sword he’d picked up from some opponent or another and left it there, quivering. The man looked down at it in surprise. Adam touched the brim of his hat, nodded, and swung his legs over the rail. His feet found the uppermost rung of one of the rope ladders and he began the perilous scramble down, hoping sincerely no one thought to cut the ropes out from underneath him.

 

End Notes:

Thanks for reading, and let me know what you think!

 

  
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680>


	12. Providence by scarredsodeep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now presenting... Blackheart Havok, diplomat! Plus: the true story of Captain Carson.

  
[Providence](http://afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680) by [scarredsodeep](http://afislash.com/viewuser.php?uid=389)  


  
Summary: It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.  
Categories: [Jadam](http://afislash.com/browse.php?type=categories&catid=6) Characters:  None  
Genres:  Action, Adventure, Alt. Universe, Romance  
Warnings:  None  
Challenges:  
Series: None  
Chapters:  16 Completed: Yes   
Word count: 80688 Read: 2074  
Published: 04/29/2011 Updated: 08/10/2011 

Chapter 12 by scarredsodeep

Author's Notes:

Now presenting... Blackheart Havok, diplomat! Plus: the true story of Captain Carson.

I don't own the boys and none of this happened. Thank you kindly for reading, and I hope you enjoy it! I had a lot of fun writing this bit.

In the end, it took the concentrated firepower of four of the Spanish ships to drive Morgan off. They never had any hope of catching him, or of sinking his ship—their best hope was always, from the moment the _Starswept_ crept up behind their doomsday formation, to blow enough holes in his ship that he had no choice but to run away. Though the buccaneers were run off from the island, Morgan’s escape cast a pall over their victory. A captain himself, Adam was sensitive to the tenacity of a fighting man’s morale and its limits alike. Right now, those limits were stretched to breaking. The _Hawk_ ’s own crew had been decimated, and the ship herself barely made it to shore, where they beached her for repairs, but they were a downright cheery bunch compared to the grim Spanish soldiers. After all, aboard a pirate ship, dead fellows meant bigger shares for the surviving men, and they had much to look forward to—shore leave while the _Hawk_ was patched, new battles tales and scars to boast about, and the wealth of Providencia shimmying into their pockets all on its own. Though the cost upon the Spanish navy had been much less steep and they had taken back the little spit of land they were so desperate for, the deadly insult that had prompted their attack had not been repaid, not while Henry Morgan lived and sailed.

This, too, Adam could relate to. He had heard stories about himself, he had, in disreputable bars in disreputable ports. He had heard that he sailed from hell, crewing a ship of only the cruelest, most deranged bastards, that his first mate was the devil himself. He had heard that he was a myth, that he had performed all manner of heroic military feats, that he was invincible, that he was the richest pirate in the Spanish Main, and that he bore Henry Morgan a terrible grudge for the murder and enslavement of his family. And, too, there were men who had not heard of him at all.

Adam thought of his wife. She had been a pretty thing, empty-headed and young, much like himself in those days. His tastes had run to men even then, but it was expected of him to marry, and so he had. He chose his wife well: Corriana’s father was a commissioned officer in the Royal Navy, and he had found Adam a placement on one of the finest English ships ever made. This had, ultimately, been bad judgment on his part. Adam fell in love with the ship the moment he laid eyes on her. She stole his breath from him and ruined him for all other love. From the moment he saw the _Starswept_ , he belonged to the sea. He had been at sea for three months when Corriana ran off with a man who planned to stay on land, and that suited Adam fine, figuring as he did that that was best for everybody. Once she ran off with the butcher, he ran off with the ship. Seeing as he no longer owed any debt to her father, what with his daughter being an adulterous harlot and all, he was free to do what he really wanted: take the _Starswept_ for his own. And he had—for a time at least, until a better pirate with a better crew took her from him, only a fortnight or so into his captaincy. At first he had thought he was being brought to justice, and that he could have lived with; but a gutless privateer taking the _Starswept_ for his own devices? That the captain could not stomach.

It wasn’t much of a story, so Adam understood why it had been embellished so—why even the truest version of his tale was nigh unrecognizable. But to the best of his knowledge Corriana was still alive and well, and he had never sired a child upon her or any other woman. It was not so sordid or splendid a tale after all. There was no blood oath, no righteous vengeance, no shaking his fist and screaming at the heavens. There was only a ship.

“Sitting at my bedside again, are we?” a hoarse voice shattered his reverie before he could wonder if that was enough, if there might be something else in the world worth having after all. Adam looked down at Jade’s prone body, tangled in sheets, flushed and sweating. His lips were cracked and peeling, his eyes only splinters of light. “If you’re not careful, wringing your hands raw over me will become a habit.”

Adam brushed the hair from Jade’s forehead and kissed it. “It best not,” he said quietly, smiling down at the greatest source of turmoil and mayhem currently—perhaps ever—in his life. “This is your last injury, do you hear me? Never again.”

Jade had never made it onto the _Starswept_. He had fainted dead away halfway up one of the ladders, strained too far with too fresh and too deep a wound, and splashed into the sea two stories below. Briscoe, god save him, had dived in after and rescued the unconscious man. Not deeming the burning ship a safe place to keep him, Briscoe had found a floating piece of debris—a piece of the _Hawk_ , no doubt—and stayed there, drifting along, protecting his captain until the _Hawk_ was safe again.

His captain. Adam hated to think he might have to kill Jade after all this, but he wasn’t about to let this insurrection continue—wasn’t about to lose another ship. Jade must have seen some of this trouble pass over his face, for he spoke with uncanny insight. “Are you going to hang me after all, then? Such dark eyes,” he murmured. Adam passed him a drinking skin and watched closely as he drank. Fevers in this part of the world were tricky things, liable to burn a man to ashes. Jade hadn’t been drinking near enough water. His yellowing skin gave him away.

Adam didn’t want to talk about Jade’s death, didn’t want to think about it—not by his hands, and not by fever. So he changed the subject. “I’ve a present for you,” he said, mischief making his eyes bright again. He left Jade’s bedside for only as long as it took to retrieve the thing from the adjacent chamber and returned grinning. Jade labored into a sitting position and Adam presented to him a theorbo. It was made of smooth black ash wood and decorated with intricate carvings. The catgut strings were, he had been assured by the man who’d crafted it, tuned to perfection. He had gone to the woodworker for a lute, but had instead been persuaded into this beautiful instrument, longer-necked and more graceful, modeled after the finest Italian craftsmanship. Lutes were a thing of the past, the woodworker had quite convinced him. The richer, more variable sound of the theorbo would usher in a whole new musical era. Adam had never spared much thought to music, but he remembered well the wistful look in Jade’s eyes when he recollected his long-ago training and had chosen his gift with great care and no regard for expense. As such, he now offered the finest instrument the woodworker on Providencia had ever crafted, watching Jade’s face closely for a reaction.

First there was disbelief on his face. And then wonderment, as he tentatively reached out and stroked the instrument’s shining neck. “It’s beautiful,” he said softly, unable to take his eyes off it.

“Take it,” Adam instructed, placing it into Jade’s shaking hands, some secret part of him believing this would heal the man. Jade held it loosely in his hands, as if afraid it would crumble into nothing if he squeezed it. Adam watched as he slowly maneuvered himself into such a position that he could hold it properly, lay his fingers on its strings.

Jade looked up at him with wide, wondering eyes. “I don’t know how to play it,” he said at last, after trying and failing several times to find words. “I—it’s been years since I’ve even held a lute, and this—I’ve never even seen a real theorbo before. Only pictures.”

Adam’s smile was a kind one, overflowing with tenderness he dared not admit to himself, let alone the man he so desperately sought to please. “You’ll learn,” he said gruffly, careful not to betray too much fondness, as if the gift—the gesture—had not done it already.

“Thank you,” Jade said somberly, his eyes inexplicably filling with tears. “I—thank you,” he repeated, voice catching. Adam was alarmed by this turn of events. Now that he thought of it—now that he thought of it, had he ever seen Jade cry? What did you say to a crying man? Did you turn away, let him collect himself, pretend not to notice his embarrassment? Or would that be—insensitive?

“Is something wrong?” he managed at last, staring in horror at a tear that had escaped onto Jade’s freckled cheek.

“Just when I make up my mind about you,” Jade said in a husky whisper, “you do something like this. Do you—do you care for me, Carson, after all? Or is this—is this just—is this just a token of your momentary attention? You’ll forget me again, I know it, but… I want…” Another tear slipped from his brimming eyes and Adam was unable to stop himself from taking a step back. It seemed indecent to watch this, to hear these words, to see his tears fall. Surely Jade did not want him to see this. Surely it was only delirium, brought on by the fever.

“My name is Adam,” he said, not really knowing what brought on the words but glad to have something to say. “You might try calling me that.” And when Jade turned his eyes on him, lamplike and seeping, Adam gave in to his deepest screaming impulse. He turned from the room quickly, forcing himself to walk away when what he wanted to do was run.

 

 

 

Previously, Blackheart had not considered himself a diplomat. He would be his own last choice as an emissary of peace, of cordial luncheons and polite demurrals and varnished haggling over spoils, all of it masquerading as gentlemanly pleasantries, all the while pretending that mutual trust, respect, and fondness dictated the engagement when it fact the air was rife was carefully veiled suspicion and abhorrence. But the captains—both genuine and false—were preoccupied, one with a slow and wasting death and the other with fussing over necessary evils and plaiting his goddamn hair. Mad Hunter might have been sent, but Mad Hunter had fallen in the battle, and after all he’d done Carson still vouched for his trustworthiness. The merchant, Blackheart suspected, would have preferred to send Briscoe—an oaf and a convict and a dullard, and worse yet a heroic one, and certainly most loyal. Carson had had the last word in this at least: Blackheart was chosen for the mission of tea and scones and pleasantries, renowned as he was for particular social grace.

Previously, it would have seemed a most tiresome ordeal to Blackheart, but of late he had discovered unplumbed depths of courtesy and pragmatism within himself, which paired nicely with his natural canniness to transform him into an extremely capable, if oleaginous, envoy. As such he did not object to the duty and met with Admiral Gutierrez in Jade’s stead, showing broken teeth and bowing low, resplendently filthy in a stained red damask waistcoat with tarnished brass buckles and an acrobat’s tight golden breeches. He had combed but not washed his long dark hair, gathering the oily strands into a rope at the back of his neck with a gold clasp, missing several of its sparkling jewels, the pocked cavities like the missing teeth of a leering skull. He had not bothered to fasten his grubby black tunic and so it fell open beneath the waistcoat, revealing the shining white scars that crisscrossed over his chest, some identifiable as burns, some as the echoes of a lash, and yet others guarding their secrets jealously. Garish and tawdry and untrustworthy as could be, Blackheart checked his reflection in a looking glass, and concluded he looked splendid.

Blackheart was escorted into a makeshift stateroom in an inn on the main avenue that the navy had appropriated. He was seated at a large, sticky table in a private room off the regular dining area and left there to wait. Under the anxious eye of the innkeeper, who, rabbit-like, could not be sure if his supposed liberators had any intention of paying him for his services or throwing him out on the street, Blackheart picked his teeth with a dagger, spitting on the swept stone floor at regular intervals and enjoying how the frightened little man flinched. He was not kept waiting long.

By the time Gutierrez’s own posted men were fidgeting nervously outside the door, glancing over their shoulders at him as if his dagger would any second be sticking from their backs—smart ones, these—Blackheart had been served a tremulous mug of ale, half slopped across the table by the innkeeper’s quaking, a stew of boiled potato and tough, chewy beef, and a round loaf of coarse bread. The admiral entered as Blackheart was tearing into his meal, ignoring the silverware set out for him and instead spearing bits of meat and potato on the end of his dagger and slurping the broth from the bowl, leaving a greasy trail on his chin that he smeared about with his equally greasy sleeve. He did not rise when Gutierrez walked in, did not even look up. Instead, he made quick work of the stew, breaking the bread into chunks and using it to sop up the gummy remains of his meal from its bowl, and downed his ale in a few gulps. All of this took only long enough for Gutierrez to give up waiting for him to rise and bestow an honorific, seat himself, and gesture to the innkeeper for his own lunch.

Finished eating, Blackheart leaned back in his chair and crossed his boots on the table, surveying the admiral with a toothy grin. He was not predisposed to smiling, Blackheart, but there was such a thing as manners, so smile he did. The admiral, apparently unobservant of niceties, did not return his smile. He only stared. When Blackheart just kept on grinning, the admiral cleared his throat, frowned down at the dented metal dish of stew the innkeeper laid before him, and said, “I had hoped to award your captain with a medal of valor in recognition of his services to King Felipe. I understand his crew took heavy losses.” His lips twisted with distaste and pushed the stew away, sighing.

He tried to meet Blackheart’s eyes, but found them locked hungrily on the second bowl of stew. “If you ain’t gonna eat it, sir,” Blackheart said significantly. Barely stifling another disquieted sigh, Gutierrez said, “Of course. Be my guest.”

Blackheart dropped his feet back to the floor and fell upon the second bowl of the dismal sludge with renewed vigor, as if he had not just downed an identical bowl and a paste-like loaf of bread. He reached across the table and seized the admiral’s own bread without asking. Gutierrez wiped the rim of his mug with a handkerchief but did not drink. While Blackheart slurped away, Gutierrez attempted again to say what he had to say. “In addition to the medal, there will of course be restitution—” Blackheart sucked up a chunk of meat along with the broth and it smacked wetly—“restitution for damages to the vessel and lives lost.” Blackheart mopped his own chin with a hunk of bread and ate it in two enormous bites. The admiral cleared his throat again, looking somewhat nauseated. His voice rose in volume. “This is all the crown can spare but I am a somewhat more generous man—”

Gutierrez broke off entirely as Blackheart continued to shovel food into his gullet as if starved. “’M listenin’,” Blackheart said thickly, mouth full of stew and half-chewed bread.

“No, no, it’s rude of me to do this while you’re eating. You’ll have to forgive me, Mr.—do you know, I don’t believe I even asked your name?” It was plain that Gutierrez was more than disgusted by his display; he was offended that the merchant had sent this man as a consul, particularly when he had found aforementioned strumpet so especially charming. The merchant, Blackheart decided sagely, had probably fucked him too. He couldn’t imagine what other wiles he could have possibly employed to convince an admiral of the royal Spanish navy that he was the goddamned captain of the bloody _Elder Hawk_ , or that she was an honorable ship, loyal to the king. Blackheart, having never been loyal to much of anything for longer than five minutes in his entire life, wouldn’t even know how to begin spinning such a lie.

Blackheart raised his head over the stew, hunched over but meeting the admiral’s eyes. Broth streamed down his chin, dripping back into the bowl. The stream widened as he bared his teeth in another hideous grin, and the admiral was on the verge of refusing to deal with him entirely when he loudly swallowed and said, “Blackheart Havok, Admiral. Pleased to make your acquaintence.”

The admiral went white as a Mediterranean beach. For a moment he was perfectly still; then he leapt to his feet and cried out to the guards, “Seize him!”

Blackheart’s pistol had already sunk into his hand, hammer cocked. He leveled it at the admiral with one hand, still stabbing bits of stew on the end of his knife and feeding himself with the other. “Not necessary, boys,” he called to the guards, who froze as quickly as they had sprung into action. There was a thud from behind the bar as the innkeeper toppled over, fainted with fright. “Bring me another beer, won’t you?” Blackheart asked one of the guards, gesturing to the bar with the pistol. Moving woodenly, the guard did as he was told. Blackheart followed him with his eyes closely as he worked, though the pistol, trained on Gutierrez, did not waver.

“What was it you were saying about your generosity, Admiral?” Blackheart prompted. “Must admit you piqued my interest with that one.”

“I won’t—I won’t have a conversation like this,” the admiral said in a gasp, trying to sound stoic. Sweat was visible on his upper lip and Blackheart knew he had him on the run. Still, the bravery he showed would border on admirable, if Blackheart was a man admired that sort of thing, which he wasn’t. “What have you done to—what happened to Captain Puget? If you’ve harmed him—”

“Stabbed him, Admiral, right in the back. Was aiming for the heart, but I’ll do better next time.” Honesty on the matter was a treat. He so rarely had the pleasure of the absolution by confession. Blackheart stopped smiling now, feeling that the time for politeness was at an end. “Now, I’ve been patient with you. But you’ll have to answer my question, sir, and be quick about it, or the general mood of our luncheon might sour. How generous are you prepared to be, Admiral?”

The admiral looked at him without fear, now—it had been hidden by a trembling sheen of fury. “Take whatever you can carry and pray you never drift into Spanish waters again,” Gutierrez said, voice low and roiling with danger, staring pure hatred at him. “Because I will not stop hunting you. You will not know peace.”

Blackheart quirked his lips and nodded, tipping the pistol back and letting it rest on his shoulder. “Generous indeed, sir,” he said approvingly.

“It’s less than I’d have given Puget,” Gutierrez spat, sensing the interview was at an end and wanting his last words to count. “It’s less than I’d have given a good man, do you hear me? You could have been heroes. You could have had letters of marque. You could have—”

Blackheart shot the admiral in the chest, looking bored. “You talk too much,” he said disgustedly as the man, throat guttering with blood, choked and fell onto the tabletop. Behind him, splattered with their commander’s blood, the two guards—officers each, Blackheart noted—exchanged glances and charged him. Blackheart had his dagger through the heart of the one on the left before he’d made it into the room; he paused a moment to holster his spent pistol and blot at his mouth with the grimy cloth napkin the innkeeper had laid out with his meal. The second guard was upon him when he looked up, as if it were an afterthought, and seized the unarmed man by the collar. He smashed his heavy pewter mug into the side of the man’s head and let him collapse on the stone at his feet. Only then did he drain what was left in the mug, relieve the admiral of his purse and the merchant’s medal, and walk whistling out of the inn and into the bright Caribbean sunlight.

 

 

 

When the _Hawk_ made ready to sail again, her holds were bursting. They had emptied a good part of Henry Morgan’s treasure trove—uninventively buried beneath the grand chair he’d set himself on in a squat little hut at the top of the hill—and, at Jade’s insistence, given the rest to the people trying to scrape out a life on Providencia, most of whom were the grimmest survivors of Morgan’s hellish attack, some of whom were slaves he’d taken from ships and ports around the world. In either case, they were people who had nothing: the natives of Providencia had lost all of their worldly belongings, their loved ones, and in most cases their livelihoods to Morgan, and the other men and women had less yet. This gift of his made it easy to replace the crew they’d lost, as it made Jade seem rich enough already to give away gold, and more men than they could reasonably accommodate were eager to find a position like that for themselves. Jade didn’t think they’d be terribly bothered when they found out the _Hawk_ was not a merchant’s vessel but a pirate’s: gold wasn’t honest or dishonest. Gold was just gold. He hadn’t met a man yet who much cared how he got it.

Repairs had been hastily done and they hadn’t spent as much time on the island as anyone would have liked. They had lost many men and much of their morale, and it seemed likely that they would lose their ship and captain too, although in the end both Jade and the _Hawk_ had been patched. Neither was good as new, but both were good enough. Jade had not set foot on land and did not intend to, but enjoyed nonetheless the freedom to be idle, to bask in the sun on an immobile deck, to eat fresh fruit and have no need to ration out water. He enjoyed, too, not pretending to be captain. He preferred picking out cautious notes on his strange new theorbo to weighing, and wasting, the lives of too many men. Thinking of lives lost made him think of Hunter, of the others. They had lost more than a score of men in the battle, more than the five Spanish ships combined. Ruminating on these numbers threw Jade into a blind rage; he smashed everything within his reach, tore at his skin and hair, and howled. It was best to keep his mind off it, but how could he? Mad Hunter had been the nearest thing to a friend he had. Hunter had supported him through the trials of his insane captaincy, had lent him the wind’s blessing and passed on murmurs of its advice, had boldly thrown the real captain and Blackheart into the brig on his behalf—had been decent to him since his first day aboard the _Hawk_ , not minding who or what he was.

And he had killed him. Hunter was only one of the many who had fallen throughout the course of the sickly-quick battle for Providencia, but it was his face above the others that stuck so fiercely in Jade’s mind. Now that the fever had passed, the real madness set in; Jade could scarce distract himself from the grief and the guilt of what he’d done. He could no longer seem to remember that he had acted as he did to save lives, or that he had given it to the men to decide whether or not they would fight.

Perhaps it was a blessing they were obligated to leave Providencia so quickly, as fast as they could resupply and patch the hull. They had spent less than a week beached on the shore by Jade’s reckoning when they took the high tide out again. Not long after making his gifts to them—a purse of gold _macuquinas_ and copper _vellón_ , a medal of bravery, and an invitation to empty Morgan’s coffers as well as, according to Blackheart, safe passage through all Spanish waters—the admiral had been murdered. Most thought the deed had been done by privateers still on the island, or perhaps a discontent who didn’t think the island belonged to England _or_ Spain, but there were murmurs—troublesome murmurs—that it had been Henry Morgan’s first mate, Blackheart Havok. This rumor was alarming for a number of reasons, least of all that it might be part true—Jade had not forgotten Eduardo’s murder—but especially because it set the Spanish, occupying the little island as well as what remained of the populace, on edge. Even with projects of rebuilding and colonization to occupy Gutierrez’s military forces, suspicions had festered. The time was ripe for a witchhunt and there wasn’t any longer a man in the navy willing to turn a blind eye to the color of the _Hawk_ ’s sails, to the decidedly cutthroat quality of her crew.

They took to the sea again at nightfall, when darkness acted as a cover and it seemed unlikely the Spanish would be able to pursue. Even if they were marked leaving shore, how would the navy get word to their ships, still ringing the bay, in time to stop the _Hawk_? There were but a few soldiers posted to night watch on each of the four ships—the fifth, bearing Jacobo Gutierrez’ body, had left two days prior for the mainland—and the _Hawk_ was able to glide by them unmolested. Jade stood at the prow as the ship passed soundlessly out into the open sea, the sky black, moonless, and nonnavigable, keeping its secrets. The horizon unfolded before them, open and limitless with possibility. They could go anywhere, Jade thought. They could run from the deaths he had caused, all of them, forever. As the sea rolled out before him, inky and gently lapping against the shoddily patched hull, Jade knew the men would expect him to make a decision. They were wealthy, now, and would be eager to make port to spend it all on booze and whores and gambling. He would need to either name that port, or bait them with some newer, bigger tale of treasure.

Jade didn’t want to be captain anymore, and it was simple as that. He had never _wanted_ to be captain. Before Carson—for he could not quite use the man’s Christian name, even after the invitation, even after everything—had left the ship, just out of sight of Providencia, he had spoken for reasons he did not understand, had asked for power. It had been a joke, he thought then, but was less sure now. For, wanting it or not, he had enjoyed it. He had enjoyed the power and the responsibility and the respect. But it had soured so quickly. So many, now, were dead.

On silent feet Carson stole up behind him, but their bodies called to one another and Jade knew he was there before the hands slipped around his waist, settling at his hips. It was just as well—he might’ve killed Carson without a second thought, just whipped around and hacked his neck in two, if he hadn’t known who in the dark was creeping up on him. Maybe that was why he didn’t want to use his lover’s proper name, Jade mused, unwilling to be distracted from his dark thoughts. Because he knew he might have to kill him one day. Carson nuzzled his face against Jade’s neck, breathing the smell of sweat and salt deeply, before resting his bristling chin on Jade’s shoulder. “We need to have words, you and I,” Carson said into his ear, filling Jade at once with dread and longing.

“Do we?” Jade asked, voice small in the vast creaking quiet as the ship ghosted over the midnight waves. He turned in Carson’s arm, facing him. Their height was like enough that they were nose to nose, eyes locked. Jade rested his forehead against the other man’s in a moment of weakness, of tenderness, and sighed. “The ship is yours, Captain,” he said solemnly, finding scant comfort in the captain’s wooden embrace. “I surrender. Do with me what you will.”

Carson’s arms suddenly tightened around him. “Oh, I intend to,” the captain said with a growl, twisting his head to catch Jade’s lips with his own. For a time they stood that way, on the prow of the ship, arms and mouths locked together in need and desperation, both unwilling for the moment to end—both unwilling to join in the unpleasant work of what must come after.  


End Notes:

There you are, lovelies! Let me know what you think!

Next week: the history of Blackheart Havok, a public execution, an uprising, and a cliffhanger to boot! You daren't miss this latest, most exciting chapter of the adventures of the _Elder Hawk_!

  
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680>  



	13. Providence by scarredsodeep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of my favorite chapters! I don't own the boys and none of this ever happened, but please, enjoy it nonetheless!

  
[Providence](http://afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680) by [scarredsodeep](http://afislash.com/viewuser.php?uid=389)  


  
Summary: It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.  
Categories: [Jadam](http://afislash.com/browse.php?type=categories&catid=6) Characters:  None  
Genres:  Action, Adventure, Alt. Universe, Romance  
Warnings:  None  
Challenges:  
Series: None  
Chapters:  16 Completed: Yes   
Word count: 80688 Read: 2074  
Published: 04/29/2011 Updated: 08/10/2011 

Chapter 13 by scarredsodeep

Author's Notes:

This is one of my favorite chapters! I don't own the boys and none of this ever happened, but please, enjoy it nonetheless!

Blackheart laid below deck in a barracks hammock, scheming. Ordinarily, he did not come down here; it was dark, and damp, and stank of bodies: living ones, with no such excuse as putrescence for their stench. As accommodations went, it was both grimy and grim, and not a day went by without his private gratitude for his own maudlin quarters. Today, however, was an important day. The actions of men today would decide the fate of them all.

It was just after dawn. Blackheart had given a vague heading to the man at the helm—not Carson, which might have irked him another day but, on this one, was just another little something to be grateful for—and the _Hawk_ parted the waves before her like a knife, making way more or less for Santiago. Santiago was the kind of port their sort only dreamed of. It was huge, a sprawling island settlement that went on for miles, with a dense downtown area and a vast shore clogged with ships, docks, and traders. It was too big a place to be an entirely reputable one, but its important location and roaring trade kept the military at hand, a fact that normally kept ships like the _Hawk_ well away from the bounty of Santiago’s shores. But the late Admiral Gutierrez had—traitor’s honor—awarded the merchant with his medal as a literal badge of honor. It would be enough to keep them out of trouble with any Spanish ships, Blackheart had sworn up and down, and buy their welcome in any manner of Spanish port. And so it was Santiago they sailed for—Santiago and certain doom. Still, Blackheart languished, in no hurry to correct his heading. They wouldn’t reach the island hub today even with the blessing of a madman’s wind. There was time yet for him to rescind their plotted course, though the men would be sorely displeased to miss the chance at Santiago’s worldly whores. Apparently backwater whores were less desirable than those trafficking in venereal disease from all four corners of the world. Not caring much for cockrot or women either, Blackheart had never had much of a preference when it came to prostitutes. They all screamed and bled and died about as well as the others, if his experience was any indicator.

Blackheart picked at his fingernails with one of his smaller knives, which caught and reflected the low lantern light. The particular hammock he currently, whimsically, occupied was not a random choice: it had been his own, once.

His first bed on the _Hawk_ had been inside a crate of grain. Naked and squalling, he had been tied to a flogging pole in the town square and whipped bloody. At first, the sentence of three lashes had seemed like a godsend—in whatever part of his shrunken animal brain that was concerned with anything above mere survival, he had expected the punishment for unnatural fornication with a wealthy highborn son to be far more severe. A hanging, perhaps—not mere public humiliation. That was before he’d seen the cat-o-nines.

By the third lash, the barbed tails had shredded his back like it was cheese beneath a grater. The second stroke had sunk wetly into his flesh and torn away with a ripping noise, for already the blood swept like a waterfall down his knobby back. Starving, he had had no fat to protect his flesh; naked, he had had no clothing to take the sting of even the first lash. Being smaller than a grown man, his back was not enough to sate the bloodlust of the barbs. The cruel tails wrapped, catching in his ribs and shoulders and chest. On the third and final stroke, a particularly wicked twist of the wrist sent one of the blunt, two-inch hooks up under his chin. It had found purchase just at the bottom of his jawline and slid to freedom down his neck, scarring him forever with a twisting ribbon of yellow wax that encircled his throat like a necklace and trickled down his back, where the trail was lost among the crosshatched jumble of all the other scars.

But they had not been scars that day. That day, they had been individual agonies, each its own fire, and his body had wept blood. When the third stroke fell, his vision had exploded into white bursts and he had fallen to his knees, suspended only by his wrists, tied to the post above his head. Only a precious few had gathered to watch his punishment. Most, upon seeing the size of him and the size of the whip—the cat-o-nines usually being reserved for rapists, murderers, and other men kept in the town gaol until the penal ships came round again—had hurried their step, turned their faces away. Many of those undeterred by the size differential turned away, too, after the first stroke landed. The destruction was utter; few had the stomach for it.

Sir Taylor Puget did. The haughty merchant bastard strode briskly into the town square and exchanged a word with the captain of the guard, at which point the whelp tied to the post had dared hope for a kindness, for he recognized this man. But after he had spoken his word, the captain of the guard had brought out the cat-o-nines, and Sir Taylor had settled back into the dwindling crowd to watch, arms crossed, looking satisfied. He was not smug; he did not seem to take undue pleasure in the suffering before him. But he watched each stroke with an exacting eye, a man accustomed to balancing currency against good, a man with a knack for naming prices. Sir Taylor’s gaze had not wavered. He watched each lash fall, nodding grimly to himself at each strangled scream. Three lashes, three screams, and Davey’s vision had popped into white blindness and he had collapsed. By the time he was roused with a bucket of stinging saltwater—a further agony that, ultimately, he was grateful for, for all that preventing infection was an unintentional kindness—Sir Taylor was gone. He had hoped—so dearly he had hoped—to never lay eyes on a Puget man again.

He had been untied from the post and given coarse, roughspun breeches to cover himself with. He was not given a shirt—it would be a waste, the gaoler said, to ruin a good shirt for the sake of his bleeding. But no sooner had he stumbled into the breeches—at least twice his size; the clothes he had left in the room of the merchant’s son had not been fine ones by any stretch of the imagination, but they had fit—than the gaoler seized him roughly by the arm and made to tie his wrists together again. He had resisted to the best of his limited strength. He had asked where he was being taken. He still, somehow, entertained the notion that his merchant boy would save him. That there would be a rescue. That just as Sir Taylor had come to the whipping, his son would come to the trial—would speak his name lovingly, and throw around another weighty purse, and that this entire misunderstanding could be put behind them. Jade would make poultices, he thought: salves. He would be nursed back to health. There would be careful stitches with fine black gut to sew him back together. When it healed, instead of scars, Jade would tell him that the marks looked like feathers, fine and white. Together they would take to wing.

It was this foolishness—three lashes with the cat-o-nines had not been sufficient to give him any sense—that kept him from fighting harder. He could have bit and scratched and kicked. Weak as he was, he might at least have pulled the gaoler’s hair. But the grinning old man had had his hands bound by the time he answered. _To the gaol_ , said the man. _And then the gallows._  
The hanging was postponed long enough for the _Valor de España_ to make way. Once the merchant’s son was far enough away to be spared the unpleasant sight, Davey was strung up and hung, struggling against his bonds, whimpering, begging. He still did not understand what he had done wrong—did not understand where his prince was, his rescue. Begging, thieving, breaking into homes at night to huddle for warmth on the hearth: these were crimes he might be hung for, crimes he had expected each day they were necessary to bring the rope ‘bout his neck. But he could not understand this—could not understand earning death by accepting the merchant boy’s love. Even as the rope burned against his skin and his legs kicked out, flailing; even as his eyes bulged and he gasped piteously; even as the oxygen deprivation made his head go fuzzy and bright, he waited, never doubting that his prince would come.

Well, bullshit. Blackheart spat furiously over the edge of the hammock. The knot had been a sloppy job, that was what had saved him. Wasn’t a man in the world he owed for that. He hit the ground running, small and fast and knowing shortcuts the fumbling city guard did not; once he gained the docks it was an easy thing to pry loose the lid of a crate and sift the grain around his body, cuts and sores from the cat-o-nines still burning. He’d been found only after two days at sea, when the madness of thirst drove him out of his crate, and brought before the captain. It was Carson who’d spared him, Carson who’d given him this miserable hammock to sleep in, Carson who’d given him orders and chores and wages like every other man aboard the _Hawk_. It was Carson taught him how to read the stars, the compass, the charts, though he’d learned so quick and well that he’d soon outstripped the need for teacher. It was Carson made him mate. If there was any man who’d rescued him, any man he owed, it was Captain Adam Carson, scourge of the Spanish Main, ruthless as typhoid, meaner than plague.

He was sorry, Blackheart realized with a jolt. Sorry—that was one of those feelings he’d figured died with him on the noose. But he was sorry, sorely sorry, to do what he knew he must. It was in the captain’s hands now. Carson could kill the merchant bastard and end this sad charade, or—if after all these years of loyalty and devotion Carson let his whore lead a mutiny and live—if Carson decided that he didn’t need Blackheart for anything, not sex or love or secondary command, even when Blackheart would have given everything—

Well then. What choice did Blackheart have? If Carson wouldn’t end it, Blackheart would do it for him. No matter what it cost, he’d do his duty proper. What the whore had done was an affront to Carson’s captaincy, and Blackheart wouldn’t stand for it. And if Carson would—he’d have to be punished too.

 

 

 

Jade was a survivor. The one chord that wove together the jangling disharmony of his life was this: he knew what it cost to survive, and he did it anyway. Before the mutiny, before Carson’s bed, before ever swearing fealty to his father’s killer—before any of that, he had been a boy, clever and empty-headed at once, and even then, he had done whatever it had taken. To survive. He had kissed girls’ hands at parties, spun them prettily and looked at them with smoldering eyes, played his part at least as well as the evening’s hired musicians played theirs, sometimes better. He had lived and died by the brush of Gregory Keefe’s fingertips before he ever realized what it meant, and when he did realize—when he did realize, he had stared down his father’s razor and thought hard about wanting to die. Buggerer or no, he had decided he didn’t. Not then and not ever.

So what was a mutiny, eh? What was a gruesome battle, a score or two of men dead on account of him? If it hadn’t been necessary—necessary for his own survival, even above anyone else’s—he wouldn’t have done it. He knew that about himself by now, just as he knew that lives lost were often enough outweighed by lives lived. And so when he, the living, had surrendered himself to the captain’s will—well—he certainly hadn’t imagined it would come to _this_ , but he was prepared to deal with it all the same. He had expected, in the end, the captain to be a reasonable, decent man. And he’d been wrong.

Jade stalked across the deck fuming, paraded at the end of Carson’s sword and cursing quietly to himself. _Why_ he’d thought the captain possessed of even a dram of sense was a mystery. He twisted his wrists against the rope that bound them—no use wasting good irons on a man bound for the Locker—as he was marched to the gunwale. Blackheart, grinning unctuously, scurried ahead to secure the plank. If this was an attempt to consolidate power, Jade thought, it was a truly misguided one. And if Carson thought for one second he was going overboard and drowning to illustrate a point on behalf of the current administration, well…

By the time everything was ready for Jade’s execution quite a crowd had gathered—enough men, jostling and calling out and muttering darkly, that Jade had reason to be concerned about who exactly was steering the ship. Most of the men, he was pleased to note, had black looks on their faces instead of the usual glee. (Pirates did love a good public execution.)

“What is the punishment for mutiny?” Carson roared, sword point still resting at the small of Jade’s back. The men, usually very fond of this call-and-answer bit of the proceedings, avoided the captain’s eyes, falling silent. John Oarless, looking at his feet, mumbled, “Death.” Blackheart looked at him incredulously, threw up his arms as if leading a song, and yelled out, “Death! Death! Yes, it’s bloody well death!”

Carson looked from man to man, visibly taken aback by their lack of enthusiasm. He truly had not anticipated this in the slightest. Were Jade in any less dire a position, he might had shaken his head and laughed at the captain’s willful naivete.

“Right,” Carson said after a pause, looking disconcerted. He gathered his wits and bellowed, “Jade Puget is a mutineer! I hereby sentence him to death by drowning!” Only a few men cheered, Blackheart loudest among them. Jade made eye contact with Briscoe, who inclined his head a few degrees in answer. The captain seemed to be making a study of avoiding Jade’s eyes, but of all the things Jade was currently inclined to fault him for, that was not among them.

Carson, for his part looking both at once determined and deeply troubled, drove Jade forward onto the plank, which groaned and bowed beneath him. Right, then, thought Jade. Enough was enough.

Having some familiarity with Carson’s knots, Jade dropped the rope with a flourish. He’d worked himself free while the captain had been speechifying. It was as if an galvanic force had run through the crew as the rope fell. Some gasped, some cheered. The blood drained from Carson’s face entire and Blackheart howled with rage.

“You should know by now your knots can’t keep me, love,” Jade told Carson with his best impish grin. It was time to play up his slatternly designation, make it work for him instead of against him; on the subject of his fucking the captain the crew’s minds were made up. The only thing to do was to own it. Even as Jade spoke, he spread his hands harmlessly wide, either as a gesture of showmanship or surrender, and nodded to Briscoe, who freed his knife from his belt and threw it. It arced through the air, end over end and flashing in the sun, and Jade felt his heartbeat slow. The knife’s journey slowed too as the lazy arc sunk to its close; Jade moved his hand deftly, knowing the odds of exiting this endeavor with ten fingers were unfavorable, and closed his fingers around what he dearly hoped was the handle and not the blade. It was; time sped up again. Carson had a sword and a pistol and footing on a solid deck, it was true, but Jade had long since proven himself skilled with Briscoe’s knife and defter yet with words—and it was not as if his predicament could have been made worse, even if Briscoe had chosen to toss him an eel. He felt much better for having something to brandish.

The fact that it was a knife changed things. The winds shifted ever so slightly in his favor. (Jade thought of his dead friend and loosed a manic smile.) Men cheered when he caught it, as if it made his situation less desperate. They hooted loudly at the lewd implications of his remark and Blackheart drew a pistol, face livid and strained. Carson had the audacity to look surprised, as if in all this time he’d never noticed Jade’s particular affinity for being alive. His best hope now, Jade knew, was that Carson didn’t _really_ want to kill him. But this whole execution thing was rather convincing. It was as if he didn’t recognize the captain—or as if he was seeing him for the first time. Carson had been fond of him, he was sure of it, if only in passing—he hadn’t believed, or wanted to believe, he was in danger. But that had been his own foolish mistake. He should have died at Carson’s hand a year ago—the sequence of events had become muddled, maybe, but fate was finally correcting itself. Carson was a notoriously ruthless man, and a pirate at that, he couldn’t forget; none of what had passed between them would stay the captain’s hand. That suited Jade fine. He was of a similar inclination himself.

“You surrendered,” Carson said, almost mustering a note of betrayal in his voice. He was still somewhat wide-eyed with surprise. _Idiot_ , Jade thought. _Did you really think I’d consent to die for your pride? You should know better._

“And I sorely regret you making me go back on my word like this,” Jade replied roguishly, going so far as to wink. The crew hooted again—battle hardened and bloodthirsty and callous as they might be, no one had ever said that pirating men didn’t have a soft spot for theater. Jade stepped into a fencing position, spacing his footing carefully to avoid being plunged into the sea, and aligned his pathetically short dagger with Carson’s center. The men laughed again at his affectation of seriousness, at the futility of his blade, and Jade wondered how much longer Blackheart would hold his shot. “I don’t mean to die today, Captain.”

“You can’t expect your treachery to go unpunished!” Carson yelled, finally recovering from his shock enough to unleash his temper, a fearsome, mercurial beast that didn’t frighten Jade in the least. He wasn’t just brave, today—he was fearless. The man he cared more for than anyone had him at swordpoint and they were poised to kill one another. Jade would not hesitate, so he could not expect Carson to. His only two friends in the world were dead and, as far as his surviving family was concerned, he had been lost at sea a year prior. What he said was true: he did not intend to die today. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to survive—nothing. And knowing that made him free. Made him fearless.

“That,” Jade said easily, amiable with a vein of steel running beneath it, enforcing it, “is exactly what I expect. Now stand down, Captain, before I’m forced to show you a real mutiny.”

With a snarl Blackheart raised and pistol and drew back the hammer. Before he could fire, an oar smashed down over his head and he crumpled unconscious to the deck, pistol flying free of his grip and skidding away to the feet of a crewman, who tucked it into his belt. Jade swept into a small bow, careful not to give Carson a chance at his exposed neck, and said grandly, “You have my gratitude, John.” Oarless, standing over Blackheart’s still form with one of the spare oars in his hands, ducked his head sheepishly.

Carson took all of this in quickly, finally seeming to realize that the tide flowed against him. Still, his sword did not waver. He was a proud man, and no one could call him a coward. “How dare you!” he yelled, spit flying from his lips, looking wild. “My own men—my own ship! Satan take the lot of you! Bastards—knaves—perfidious traitors!” Carson had begun swining his sword about as he ranted, forcing Jade to take another step back. Any further and the board would not support him—it was already creaking and swaying as if it would at any moment plunge him into the sea. His footing was harder to keep than ever; it took the combined effort of more muscles than he’d known he had to keep his balance. Still, mindful of appearances and how crucial they were with regards to the crew’s favor, he did not show his strain. It was not a week ago he’d been laid up, recovering from a mortal wound—still he dared not show even a moment’s lapse of strength. There was no doubt that the will of a mob was mercurial, and at the moment, the crew was nothing if not a mob.

Carson seemed disinclined to stop ranting, so Jade had little choice but to interrupt. “Captain!” he called out sternly. Carson paused in the middle of a particularly venomous defamation—something about rat-eating lily-livered Frenchmen—and advanced on Jade. However, Jade was forced to remind himself, he was fearless.

“Adam,” Jade said, voice swelling to fill the silence like velvet. The name burned on his tongue, melting like butter, or metal made scalding by the sun. He deeply misliked speaking the word aloud. It was a foul thing to kill a man you cared for, and a fouler thing yet to kill a man you called by his Christian name.

“I don’t want your ship,” Jade went on, and there wasn’t a man save Blackheart not hanging on his words. “I don’t want the power or the responsibility. But don’t think for a moment that I’d die to prove it. Don’t even imagine that if you ask me to choose between your life and mine it’s yours I’ll be choosing.” Jade took a deep breath, feeling certain that if another large wave chopped across the prow and sent the plank shuddering his testicles would withdraw entirely. God but he wanted to stand on solid deck. It’d be a shame to waste these pretty words by tumbling backwards into the blue.

Still, he showed none of it. “So stand down,” he said evenly, calmly, without threat or rancor. The strength of his position was plenty clear without bluster. Well, perhaps not his bodily position. That was—rather tenuous.

“Are you—you’re threatening me?” Carson managed at last, in outrage.

“Of course I am, love,” said Jade. “Didn’t think I’d just let you kill me, did you?”

Unprompted, Briscoe drew his pistol. Several men echoed the motion—even Oarless brandished his oar menacingly. “You ‘eard ‘im, Cap’n!” Briscoe rumbled. “Now put yer sword down quicklike, afore we remember all them lovely thing Cap’n Puget did for us and start to reckon we’d like new management.”

Jade cracked a grin at Briscoe’s little speech. His position was even prettier than he’d imagined. He thought back on his brief tenure as captain and decided he’d done a rather nice job at it after all. Taking a vote, making friends with the Spanish, surviving an assassination attempt, leading them to victory in battle, setting them down on Providencia at last and weighing down their purses with Henry Morgan’s gold. Yes—excepting the lives lost, he’d been quite a fine leader of men. And Hunter had known it from the start, the mad old bastard, Jade thought fondly. Bless his poor stopped heart.

The sound of Carson’s sword hitting the deck pulled Jade from his thoughts. “There’s a reasonable man,” Jade said affectionately. Carson glowered.

“Back to the brig with me, is it?” he spat.

Jade stepped back onto the deck and scooped up Carson’s sword, making a show of buffing the guard with his dark blue shirt before offering it back to the captain, handle first.

“Wouldn’t dream of it, your captain-ness, sir,” he said as humbly as possible. Carson took the sword gingerly, still willfully stubborn enough to think it a trick. Lucky he’s such a handsome idiot, Jade thought, glad he wouldn’t have to murder him.

“So that’s it? You aren’t taking the ship?” Carson asked suspiciously. The crew, still armed and eager for violence, looked from Carson to Jade expectantly.

“Told you already, Captain,” Jade said, putting Briscoe’s knife in his belt as a gesture of peace and stepping close to Carson, close enough to lightly rest tentative fingertips on the powerful curve of the man’s arm. “It’s not your ship I want.”

Jade let his fingers trail down Carson’s arm and drop, surprised when the captain caught and held them. He was staring at Jade as if he couldn’t look away, eyes boring deep into Jade’s own, and Jade didn’t know if he was about to be shot in the head or kissed passionately. Carson, looking downright hypnotized, didn’t seem to know either.

“What is it you want, then?” Carson asked hoarsely as the crew put up their arms and began to dissipate around them, sensing the excitement had passed. Out of the corner of his eye Jade saw Oarless seize Blackheart by the ankle and begin to drag him away. Nice boy, Jade thought distractedly, unable to look away from the captain’s searching gaze.

“You, Adam,” he said at last, breaking their eye contact to study the scuffed toe of his boot, surprised and embarrassed by how much he meant it. “Only you.”

The captain’s fingers curved under Jade’s chin sweetly, raising his face til their eyes drew level.

“Well if that’s all,” the captain breathed, and leaned in to press a light, sweet kiss to Jade’s parted lips. Without another word Carson tightened his grip on Jade’s hand and led them, both mesmerized, into the dark privacy of his cabin.

 

 

 

When he awoke, he found himself lashed to the mast, ropes fastened none too gently. The ship pitched beneath him and rain stung his skin, the wind howling. His eyes, caked shut with salt and blood, cracked open by degrees. The blue one opened first, rain water flushing it, while the green one was stuck fast. He struggled for a free hand to rub it with to no avail. A cut on his head throbbed mightily and pink drops of rain hung from his eyelashes. He squinted down at the deck, but between his partial blindness and the solid sheets of sideways rain, he could make out almost nothing. Blurred figured and shouts, caught by the wind and distorted. Everything looked alien, the proportions all wrong. So many men—so much rain—the deck so large. And—if he wasn’t mistaken—was that _twelve_ cannons? He twisted his head as best he could and tried to make out the cannons on the starboard side. Twelve there, too—but how?

The truth came to him slowly. This wasn’t the _Hawk_. He was the prisoner of some other ship.

Mad Hunter opened his swollen mouth and let out a jagged scream. The sound of it was swallowed entire by the storm, and the wind beat round his head, sharp as a lash. There was no use crying out, it told him. The others were long gone now. Besides, it added sinisterly, he wouldn’t want the _Starswept_ ’s captain to hear him.  
q95;

End Notes:

What, you thought I'd kill him off without even a magnificent death scene?

Thanks for reading, lovelies! Next week: consequences.

P.S.: "Galvanic force": trying super-hard not to say 'electric'. Been struggling with that this entire story! Not that 'galvanic force' is much more period appropriate.

  
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680>  



	14. Providence by scarredsodeep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BETRAYAL!

  
[Providence](http://afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680) by [scarredsodeep](http://afislash.com/viewuser.php?uid=389)  


  
Summary: It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.  
Categories: [Jadam](http://afislash.com/browse.php?type=categories&catid=6) Characters:  None  
Genres:  Action, Adventure, Alt. Universe, Romance  
Warnings:  None  
Challenges:  
Series: None  
Chapters:  16 Completed: Yes   
Word count: 80688 Read: 2074  
Published: 04/29/2011 Updated: 08/10/2011 

Chapter 14 by scarredsodeep

Author's Notes:

BETRAYAL!

I don't own the boys and nary a word of this occurred, but it is my truest wish that you enjoy it nonetheless.

Blackheart Havok had a fearsome headache, and a fearsome countenance to match. With a look to him like a curdled thing he rolled over, moaning, and managed to lift himself to his knees. He clung to the mildewed chaise desperately as the world rocked and roiled about. His breath came in hard gasps, and it seemed as if the room would split apart around him, that his head would burst.

The heat was untenable. He lurched to his feet, which barely held him. He dared not release the chaise, and he didn’t much care for collapsing—‘twas an undignified business, really. But the pressure in his throbbing head was matched only by the pressure in the cabin. He needed to breathe. He needed fresh air. He needed to know that the merchant was dead, needed to verify it, needed absolute certainty that the torment of his memories, of pleasure and pain and the one man who had dared to make him feel human—that it was at last at an end. That he never need be reminded again of love, humiliation, disappointment, or loss.

He was Blackheart Havok. The muscle in his chest was shriveled and dead, made of rot and maggots and despair. It did not beat. It did not live. He felt nothing.

Strengthened by this, Blackheart pushed aside the nauseous pounding of his too-tight head and staggered across the officer’s quarters. He landed heavy on the doors, which burst outwards, open, and fell onto the deck. He sucked air greedily, red spotting his vision. For the first time he wondered what was wrong with him. Why couldn’t he stand straight? Had something happened to his head? He probed lightly with his fingertips, working over his scalp. At the back of his head he felt a great, swollen welt, crusty with blood. His hair was matted with the same. It bore further investigation, but a shadow fell over him and Blackheart looked up at the shape of a man, suddenly aware he lay curled on the deck, prone and without defense. He squinted at the face, black against the sun, and little by little John Oarless swam into view. He had an oar across his shoulders like a yoke, scrawny arms looped over it. He stood with an easy arrogance, a kind of swagger, that Blackheart didn’t much like.

“Cap’n reckons you got some kind of cun-fussion, a swelled-up brain. So don’t go getting up on my account.” Blackheart wormed on the deck, weak and woozy, misliking the boy’s tone but unable to do much about it. The heat was exactly as oppressive out here as it had been in his cabin, where he had woken in an unceremonious heap on the floor. Blackheart’s already tumultuous stomach soured. He was, for the first time in his life as Blackheart Havok, powerless. Worse yet, Oarless did not seem afraid. Captain, he’d said—but when had Carson ever bandied about medical terms and diagnoses? Captain, he’d said. Blackheart found himself in the unfortunate position of wondering: Captain who?

“What I reckon, though,” Oarless went on, altogether more menacingly now. “What I reckon is that you’d better be careful where you point your pistols, Havok, if you read me right. We ain’t forgot what you done to Bloodless, see, and the way I figure it is, iff’n I bring this oar down on your skull again, you’ll got more—or, I oughtta say, less—to worry ‘bout than a swolled-up brain.”

Oarless rocked back on his heels and tried to spit, dribbling on his chin in the attempt. By power of sheer fucking disgrace alone Blackheart clawed himself into a folded heap of a sitting position and spat proper. “Well ain’t you a regular skelly-bones,” he growled, sounding more groggy than dangerous.

Oarless dropped his oar in a hurry and snapped to attention. “Sir!” he barked crisply. Blackheart only thought for a moment he’d been so frightening; next moment Carson stepped into his view and he breathed a sigh of relief. Oarless had been about to kick him in the guts, but Carson—Carson was the captain. This was Carson’s ship. And, goddamnit, Blackheart fucking Havok was first fucking mate.

“That’ll do, John,” the captain said mildly, a trace of amusement in his voice that Blackheart did not share. Carson looked relaxed, loose, happy—it was hard for even Blackheart to believe this peace had been caused by the lifting of an albatross from his neck. He didn’t doubt that the merchant was an albatross, nor that his execution would lighten Carson’s soul. What he doubted was that his captain was ruthless enough, these days, to wear a smile beneath his executioner’s hood.

But things had at least not gone too badly, for as Oarless shambled off Carson knelt and offered Blackheart a hand. He had no choice but to accept the help: though the violent swirling and lurching had subsided somewhat, he doubted very much he would be able to stand alone.

“Quelled their latest mutiny, eh?” Blackheart said, punctuating his question with a hacking cough. If it was Oarless had done this to him, Blackheart vowed, he’d soon wear the bastard’s guts as a necktie.

“I’ve come to see it in a different light,” Carson said, linking their arms in a way that made Blackheart profoundly uncomfortable. The tingling that ensued was a side effect of the head wound, surely. “To hear it told by those present,” Carson went on diplomatically, “there never was any mutiny—just an act to fool the Spanish into helping us fill our holds.”

Hellfire and damnation, but unless Blackheart was more ‘cun-fussed’ than he thought, the captain was taking him for a goddamned turn about the deck. There was just something about promenading, Blackheart thought darkly, that was not entirely in keeping with his unholy-terror-from-hell reputation.

“And you can’t argue, Davey, that our holds haven’t been this full in a long time,” Carson went on pleasantly. That awful name made his skin crawl—tingle—flush. He could not entirely convince himself this was unpleasant. But the important thing—Blackheart desperately tried to clear his muddled head of concussion and Carson alike—was whatever the captain was leading up to. Blackheart began to suspect that the execution had not gone forth as planned—that with the captain’s blessing, the filthy scheming merchant would live. And if that were true—  
Well. If that were true, his revenge was already set in motion. If Carson had failed to do what was necessary, Blackheart would do it for him to the ruination of them all—as any good mate would.

Still, dark contingencies gnawing as they were, Blackheart leaned more heavily on the captain than was strictly necessary. For at least a moment, he wanted to walk with the captain, feel the sun on his face, and try his hardest to believe the merchant was dead at last.

 

 

 

The next time he stumbled across consciousness, Hunter was slumped sideways against the chest of a colossal dark-skinned man. The ropes around his own chest were being loosed slowly, the big man easing him down while his unseen partner fed out the rope. Groggy and weak, Hunter fluttered open the eye that responded to his entreaties—the blue one again. The lid over the green did not so much as stir. In fact, aside from a dull sort of throb, he couldn’t feel the green eye at all.

Once he’d been lowered off the mast and sat down on the deck, the dark-skinned man splashed his face with water, salt and sting. Hunter gasped and spluttered as it filled his mouth and nose, coughing it back out of his lungs. Satisfied that he was awake, the big man lifted him like a sack of flour and heaved him over his shoulder. Hunter was grateful for it, with his characteristic oddness. It wasn’t especially stately as methods of transport went, but he had absolutely no confidence in his current ability to walk so much as two steps. He wondered how long he’d been up there. The dullness of his head, the cramped lethargy of his limbs, the removed gnawing of his stomach—it had been at least a day. Before the liberal application of seawater, his clothes had been dry and tight, his skin crackling—long enough after the storm to have dried completely. More than a day, then, he reckoned.

The dark-skinned man climbed a curling staircase to the upper deck, none too careful of Hunter’s head as he went. Unceremoniously, he dropped Hunter in a heap in front of a set of double doors, polished oak—the captain’s quarters or he’d be twice-damned and liver-spotted.

“Thank you kindly,” Hunter rasped to the man, throat torn from choking and dry as a desert. In reply the man kicked him sharply in the ribs and stalked away.

If Hunter was worried about being left in a heap in front of the doors, he didn’t have to worry long. No sooner had the dark-skinned man broken his ribs and stomped away—Hunter decided to call him Sunshine—than the doors opened inward and a slim, weaselly mean slunk out.

“The captain will see you now,” he squeaked, and then fluttered about as if he expected Hunter to get up on his own. He visibly cringed when he finally knelt down to gingerly seize Hunter’s arm and pull. Hunter decided to call him Daisy. With Daisy’s rather limp assistance, Hunter gained his feet and hobbled into the dark of the cabin.

 

 

 

“I can feel you dreaming of me,” a voice murmured into his ear. Adam drifted pleasantly upwards and broke the surface of his sleep as teeth nipped his ear and a hand wrapped around his cock.

“ _Ijada_ ,” he sleep-sighed pleasantly, a smile passing over his peaceful face as he rolled into Jade’s touch. The teeth were on his neck now, lips grazing skin and raising goosebumps. Jade’s graceful fingers slipped up the length of his cock, bringing his hips sleepily after them, and Adam hummed in the back of his throat, still not opening his eyes. He was having the best dream. Jade’s lips slipped lower, tongue fussing with Adam’s nipple, licking at the tines of the compass rose tattooed over Adam’s heart that had ever led him true. The hand came down again, squeezing the thick base of Adam’s morning stiffness. Adam, however, refused to be pulled from sleep. He was peaceful, warm, happy—and the dream was a beautiful one. In it—Jade worrying at his hip now like a dog with a bone—he was not a captain, not even a sailor. In the dream, there was no ship, nor did there need to be. There was no sea. His veins were empty of salt, his wanderlust sated entire. He was only a man, tethered to the land by the love of another, wanting for and needing nothing. Adam jolted as Jade’s mouth closed over the head of cock and sucked in his breath as Jade’s tongue began a tortuously pleasurable journey up and down it, but he didn’t open his eyes.

In the dream, Jade loved him. But the dream-Jade had been drained of brine and ambition both; he did not feel the call of the sea or the seduction of power. He was willing and able to set foot on land. He loved Adam, and that was enough for him—he was nothing, really, like the Jade of the waking world. And Adam was not his dream-self either.

“ _Ijada_ ,” Adam moaned in his throat, willing the dream into reality. He wanted so badly to be that man, happy in one place, untroubled by vengeance, able to love whoever and whatever he wished—not the _Hawk_ , not the sea, but Jade and their life together.

But the dream was growing hazy, fading quickly. The more awake he came the harder its disparate pieces were to hold together. The broader the gap betwixt sleeping and waking, the harder the realities were to reconcile. And so he gave in, and woke with a start, at the same moment coming suddenly; it must have been a surprise to Jade, but he didn’t show it. He swallowed Adam’s seed with a coy look in his eyes, though Adam knew it had been bitter as the sea itself, and moved up Adam’s body to fit into the space beside him. Jade laid his head on Adam’s shoulder, still full of fire.

“Quick this morning,” he purred suggestively, trying to entice Adam and succeeding to a considerable degree. “You must have been having some lovely dreams.”

“I was,” Adam said, voice not without sadness. Jade propped himself up on an elbow, plainly hoping for the libidinous details, but Adam wasn’t able to lie, not even to please him.

_We were in love, and it was enough_ —he considered saying it. In the end, though, even the truth was too much to bear—was too difficult.

Instead, Adam said nothing.

 

 

 

“Are you a superstitious man?” the voice wound out of the darkness like smoke. The eye that would open was sluggish, struggling to adjust to the cabin’s low light. Hunter dearly wanted to wash his face, fresh water and free hands with which to rinse and prod his recalcitrant eyeball. Even more pressingly, he wanted food. He did not know how long it had been since he had eaten. He had managed to catch some rainwater on his tongue, but his thirst was nonetheless becoming urgent. He was beaten and bruised, dizzy and stiff-limbed, starving and parched and taunted by the dull ache of his swollen, closed eye. He felt absolutely as wretched, he was sure, as he looked.  
Still, he had been asked a question. It was only polite to answer it before he posed his own. It was important to Hunter to assume that his host was a reasonable one, bound by the niceties of guest-custom, though typical guest accommodations were not ropes and a vertical length of wood. It had been a long time since he had been anyone’s prisoner, and he did not relish a return to those dire circumstances. So he would follow the protocol of polite company, and fiercely hope that his host would do the same.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Hunter rasped, surprised at how rough the words came out. His throat had cracked like desert sands, or rusted like French cannons; not until he heard himself did he consider it luck that he could speak at all. By degrees the room was coming clearer. The man addressing him had resolved into a red slurry of a shape. Still, from his tone of voice, Hunter imagined he was raising an eyebrow.

“No?” the red shape asked. “I won’t pretend that’s not upsetting news. I’d been under the impression you were an instrument of the wind. ‘Twas a costly bargain I struck for you, I’m afraid.”

“I said I wasn’t superstitious,” Hunter grated. “Didn’t say the wind don’t speak to my ear. Just don’t find it a superstition is all. More like fact.”

“You’ve made me a very happy man,” the man said, for it was a man after all, one dressed in red and a curling black wig and a proud little mustache. “Tell me, my merry talisman, what is your name? Are you…?”

“Mad Hunter,” Hunter answered.

“That your Christian name?” the man asked critically.

“Mad Hunter _Burgan_ , beggin’ yer pardon. An’ you must be the bastard captain of this bastard ship, eh, Cap’n Morgan?”

Morgan frowned ever-so-slightly, smoothing his mustache with distaste. “ _Sir_ Morgan, if you’d be so kind,” he said in a way that sounded quite like an order. “I’ve heard of you as well, Mr. Burgan. Mad Hunter is a name that travels. I’ve heard that you’re cursed, blessed, and unkillable. I’ve heard that you’re not a man at all, but a mer-creature. I’ve heard men swear in the same breath that you’re only a man, that you’re the wind itself. So perhaps we can do business together. You see, I’d like you to bring me the wind.”

He was very possibly delirious, Mad Hunter was, having spent an unknown amount of time lashed to the mast and lost an unknown amount of blood from his head while he was at it. That may or may not have been sufficient to account for his response. Bring me the wind, said Morgan. Mad Hunter threw back his head and laughed.

He laughed for some time. When he had recovered enough to speak, still guffawing and shaking his head, he spoke in a gravelly gasp. “Have you ever had a cat, Cap’n Morgan? Or a woman? There be some things in this world that simply don’t go where they’re told. The wind is one of ‘em.”

Morgan frowned much more openly now. “Perhaps you didn’t understand me properly, Mr. Burgan. Bring me the wind and I’ll extend your miserable life for as long as you’re useful to me. Or keep your secrets, and I’ll extend your miserable life only long enough to think of the messiest, most painful way there is to end it.”

Hunter spoke with remarkable flippancy and calm, given the nature of the conversation. “That’ll be flaying, I expect,” he offered helpfully. “Right nasty business, flaying is.”

Morgan did not appear grateful for the heartfelt advice. “This isn’t a game, Mr. Burgan.”

“No, I reckon it’s not. The wind can’t be bought or sold, Cap’n, and I wouldn’t give ‘er to you even if she was mine to sell. Why don’t you call for some food and some water and someone to tend to my eye, and then we’ll dispense with all the intimidation and talk about this like proper men.”

At last, Morgan looked amused. The corners of his mouth twitched and Hunter grinned broadly. There now, he thought. Wasn’t so hard to be civilized, was it?

“I am a bit peckish, now that you mention it,” Morgan said, and gestured sharply to Daisy. “Fetch my lunch, won’t you? And a waterskin for our friend.” They sat in a silence Hunter thought of as friendly as Daisy trotted off. He returned moments later bearing a generous tray of food, a golden-brown baked game hen like a jewel in its center, the smell enough to fill Hunter’s mouth with rancid saliva. Daisy set the tray before Morgan, who cut delicately into the hen and speared a sliver of soft, pale meat on his fork. He surveyed it critically before laying it on his tongue and chewing pensively. As he did this, Daisy uncapped the waterskin and seized Hunter by the jaw, jerking his head back. Hunter parted his cracked lips obligingly, thinking he might die of relief when Daisy at last tipped the skin’s nozzle into his mouth. Hunter took a greedy gulp, water sloshing over his chin and onto his chest, and immediately retched, spraying himself and the floor before him with the foul acidity of seawater. Morgan patted his mouth daintily with a cloth napkin and pushed the tray away, virtually untouched.

“Thank you, Benjamin,” he said politely to Daisy, who whisked the tray away again without a word, parading its rich smells past Hunter, who lay choking and gasping on the damp rug. “A fine suggestion, Mr. Burgan,” Morgan declared with a grin, resting a hand on his stomach to demonstrate how fortifying the meal he had sent away had been. Then, in case Hunter had any doubt left that he was dealing with a truly evil man, he added, “As to your eye, however, I’m afraid there’s very little I can do. A seagull ate it out of your head two days ago. Now, about the wind…”

 

 

 

The wind, which had lain largely dormant since Mad Hunter had fallen, cracked crisply in the sails and rocked the ship pleasantly. Great gusts of it surged the _Hawk_ over the vast plain of ocean and threw mist across Jade’s face where he stood, leaning out dangerously far over the bowsprit. He’d be more mindful of his back, and indeed usually was, if the crew hadn’t rallied in his name just a few days prior at his execution. If any of them had wanted to see him do a dead man’s jig, dangling from the bowsprit, there had been plenty of opportunity for it when Carson tried to send him overboard. For as long as that act of loyalty to him stayed fresh in the crew’s heads—or as long as Briscoe was at hand—he reckoned he was just as safe hanging out over the gunwale as he was tied to the mast.

He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about his execution. He’d survived it, and that was a fine thing, more than most men could say about their own appointments with the gallows. And it wasn’t that he’d thought Carson had such affection for him that it would subvert his obligations as captain, and it wasn’t that he’d have been pleased to have exception made for him based on the preferences of the captain’s cock. But the fact that Carson had made up his mind that Jade must die, and that he’d lived—that, perhaps, was worrying. Jade was not the man he’d been: his short stint as captain had changed him as much as the entire year preceding it. Men had respected him, had followed him, had given their lives to him willingly. He no longer was in a position to fret over whether or not he belonged on the _Hawk_ , for he had his answer. No, he didn’t belong among the crew. But he was certainly suited to lead them. He wasn’t a pirate, born or made—he was a captain. There was a cold authority in his veins, a nobility, a preoccupation with status and a gift for wielding power and men alike—and it had always been so. But when had he ever had a chance to see it until now? Carson’s foolishness at Providencia had let him find within himself a powerful being, a leader of men. And his execution had proven to him that what he had done in his brother’s name had been more than an act: it was a calling.

So then, when he had outlived his death sentence and found in himself this new strength and purpose, what had he done? Why, crawled back into the captain’s bed. But it had been different, this time. It had felt—it had felt as if Carson was powerless to stop him. As if the captain were exhausted, resigned, a condemned man past railing against his fate. And hadn’t Jade been the one to lead Carson? Hadn’t Jade been the one to take what he wanted, and still more, and then leave Carson panting on the mattress, spent and helpless? Spent and helpless while Jade stood here, on the prow of the ship, looking out over the ocean like he owned it. Carson had condemned him to death, and the captain he knew would have preferred a full-scale mutiny over seeing a traitor live. That he yet lived meant that Carson had never truly wanted him to die. That he yet lived meant that Carson felt something.

After all this time, it had come to pass that Jade Puget, son of Sir Taylor and rightful heir to the Puget fortune, was not the captain’s pet cocksucker. He was something greater than that, something more. The men saw it; the captain saw it; even Blackheart saw it, if the enraged howls coming from his cabin were any indication. It had been everything he’d wanted, not so long ago: to hold the captain’s attention. To earn respect and love. What had he planned to do with those things? Jade could no longer remember. As he stood now, looking out over the open sea, breathing glorious salt, feeling he owned everything he laid eyes on—as he stood now, he couldn’t see that the captain’s love and respect were worth anything at all. Not gold, certainly. Not jewels. Not fame or freedom or a ship of his own. And what else was there? At last, he had made the captain fall in love. But what for? Surely Jade had never intended to fall in love, too.

 

 

 

He could hardly bear to look at the captain anymore. Could hardly recognize him. Even the sounds of the fucking were different. Something tender in it, now. Something that made Blackheart’s pistol waver between the sounds he knew as the merchant and the sounds he knew as the captain, not sure which he wanted to shoot. Something _weak_. Carson had been the strongest man he’d ever met. Looking upon him, whipped and bloody and covered in ruined grain, Carson had curled up his lip and sneered. No pity had softened his gaze. “Do you know what we do with stowaways on this ship, lad?” he had asked at a growl. The men had jeered around him, lewd catcalls and gestures rippling through them. Blackheart wondered how it was possible, how his body, wracked and ruined, might still emanate sex—but the men jeered nonetheless, and Carson grinned, showing his teeth, crooked and yellowing.

Blackheart had been so frightened he pissed himself. They had a good laugh at that, the crew did, but Carson’s eyes had remained calculating, taking him in from head to toe. Blackheart, however crippled by fear, had done the same. The longer he looked at the captain, the more he realized he was intoxicatingly handsome—powerful—strong. He decided at that moment he would do anything to live—would do anything to stay near this man, under his protection. “Don’ kill me,” Blackheart had begged, voice hoarse from dehydration. “I—I can be useful.”

“And how can you do that?” the captain had asked, blue eye closing in on Blackheart until he had felt—no, known—that he was the only other man in the world, that the whole of creation was sculpted for they two, that there were no limits to the wonders of their god-given paradise. If only the captain would take his hand, they could stride out into infinity together. The captain smirked a little, as if he knew exactly what services Blackheart was so keen to offer, exactly what embers of hunger the merchant had stoked and fed within him, exactly what blaze was growing to consume. The captain looked into him, and saw this, and laughed. Davey became aware, suddenly, of the smell of urine—it was not the first time in the last few days he had soiled himself. He became aware of the blood caked on him, the skin, cracked and torn and ugly. He became aware of his filthy hair, his face swollen from a beating he’d received from the gaoler, of the underfed and sallow state of his skin, stretched like wax across brittle bones. Perhaps the crew could see, looking at him, that, pretty-faced, he had once been the pleasure of many. But there was no man alive that would find him desirable, the state he was in—no man that would find him desirable ever again, with the fresh red scars that wound round his body and ruined him. The captain’s one eye glittered, reflecting this, mocking him.

That was when he had decided to never be desirable again. He had suffered his share of abuse, and rape, and prostitution; he had come alive under Jade’s touch in a way he hadn’t known he was able. But looking at the captain and knowing he’d never touch him, even when his life was in jeopardy, nothing was more important to Davey than deciding that no one would dare look on him at lust again. He was as beautiful as he was hideous and men would fear to look upon him—because the very sight would fill them with the knowledge that if they put their cock inside him, he would bite it off. He would grow teeth, and claws, and poison his own heart. Then, when it died, he would rise up strong and fearsome and untouchable—in that way, and in that way only, could he be worthy of the infinity he saw in the captain’s eyes.

The gently mocking gaze of the captain was still on him, and Blackheart changed his answer before he spoke it. “I can work,” he said at last. “I can learn. An’ I won’t forget that you saved me. I’ll stand at your back and protect you ‘til the debt is repaid—my life for yours.”

The captain’s eye twinkled merrily and the man threw back his curly-haired head and laughed out loud, the sound rich and thick and buzzing warmly in Blackheart’s bones. “Hear that, boys?” he boomed to the crew, which answered with their own guffaws and jests. “Got me a new guard dog! Best watch your step, you lot!” Blackheart’s face burned with shame, but he was proud too, stubborn in the face of their mockery. When the captain turned back to him, his eye was kinder. “I’ll be having your name, then,” he said. Dizzily wondering if it would be for his tombstone, Blackheart said his Christian name in a squeak, and the captain nodded. He singled out a man in the crew, a bald-headed one with a mad look in his mismatched eyes. “Hunter! Take Davey here below deck and find him a hammock. I don’t want anyone troubling him, hear? I charge you with this.”

The mad-eyed man had tilted his head to the side, as if listening, even after the captain had stopped speaking. At length he nodded his assent and said, “Aye, Cap’n, I reckon we’ve room for one more.”

And so it was that Blackheart Havok began his sailoring life. He’d grown into it quickly, proving himself true and earning a black reputation and name to match in little over a year’s time. It hadn’t been long at all until the captain trusted him implicitly and relied on him in all things. They were as close as two souls could be without touching, and the daily agony of it had almost been enough to change his mind. Every day he had wrestled with it, with the idea of ripping his chest bare and cutting it open, pouring his blood at the captain’s feet and pledging his love with his dying breath. Every time Carson smiled at him it took his breath away. But he had resolved to be heartless, to wait a little longer, just a little while more, for the captain to realize it—to realize him. And then the merchant had come aboard the ship, clouding the captain’s eyes so completely he couldn’t see anything else. Blackheart had been able to believe that the captain might yet realize his error, might yet look at him with soft eyes and with soft lips pronounce his name—had been able to believe that whether or not the captain ever loved him didn’t matter, so long as he could serve at the captain’s side.

Not so anymore. Now, when he looked at the captain, all he saw was weakness. The love that he had so long longed for in the captain’s eyes now sickened him, and he believed it would have sickened him no matter who it shined there for—even if it had been Blackheart himself. True to his own design, he had wrought himself a creature who could not stomach the sight of love or peace or happiness. He despised the captain for it. He despised everyone.

For all that it kept him awake at night and tormented him even into dreams, it made what came next easy. He went down to the helm, where John Oarless stood dim-wittedly at the wheel, with a fistful of charts and a foul temper. He raged and screamed and gestured wildly at the charts, putting on more of a show than was necessary and failing to frighten Oarless even a whit, but that wasn’t so important to him anymore. Their course was changed, their heading modified. That was all that Blackheart cared about. It didn’t matter if the men feared him. They didn’t need to be afraid to die. Whether they pissed themselves or not, he’d kill ‘em just the same. He’d kill them all. In fact—Oarless adjusting their course so they sailed straight for the agreed-upon coordinates—they were dead already.

End Notes:

I haven't words enough to thank you all for reading, and for your kind reviews! I appreciate you. Feel appreciated.

Also, come back next Wednesday to have your world rocked. It's going to bloody, and it's going to be epic. Love you all!

  
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680>  



	15. Providence by scarredsodeep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost forgot to post this today! In my addled head it was Tuesday. But my wits returned to me, and just in time too: it's a good one! I don't own the members of AFI and none of this ever happened. Even so, thanks for reading!

  
[Providence](http://afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680) by [scarredsodeep](http://afislash.com/viewuser.php?uid=389)  


  
Summary: It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.  
Categories: [Jadam](http://afislash.com/browse.php?type=categories&catid=6) Characters:  None  
Genres:  Action, Adventure, Alt. Universe, Romance  
Warnings:  None  
Challenges:  
Series: None  
Chapters:  16 Completed: Yes   
Word count: 80688 Read: 2074  
Published: 04/29/2011 Updated: 08/10/2011 

Chapter 15 by scarredsodeep

Author's Notes:

I almost forgot to post this today! In my addled head it was Tuesday. But my wits returned to me, and just in time too: it's a good one! I don't own the members of AFI and none of this ever happened. Even so, thanks for reading!

Feeling foolish, Adam scrabbled up the rigging like a monkey, hoping he looked less silly and uncertain than he felt. He had watched Mad Hunter climb up into nothingness like this a thousand times—had himself climbed up to the crow’s nest more often than he could put a number to. But neither watching nor climbing to a stationary destination had prepared him for the way it felt in his clenched-up guts as he stepped into the sky. By the time he reached the height of the crow’s nest, he was clutching the ropes to his chest and breathing hard, though not from exertion, between each horrifying moment when he let go of the shroud with hand or foot to move higher up it. Every instinct he possessed told him to climb back down, that it was unnatural for a man to be so high up, so unsupported, but climb he did. When he reached the top, looking down on the crow’s nest and the lesser sails, it was hard to draw breath at all. He had not thought he was afraid of heights, but then, he hadn’t ever been this high up, suspended by mere threads in open space, tossed about on the wind like a feather. He held on for dear life and placed all of his hopes on the idea that Mad Hunter had not been mad after all.

Maybe the wind spoke; maybe it did not. But Mad Hunter had climbed the shroud for guidance at the top of the world, for the freedom of putting his life in the hands of something greater than itself, for the balm of trusting in that greater thing to buoy him up instead of tossing him, like so much as a rag doll, to his death. Adam wanted all of those things: guidance, clarity, freedom, faith. Mostly he wanted to sort himself out. His only surety in life had been the _Hawk_ , his ship and life and mission. Now it seemed as if the _Hawk_ was not his anymore—that she too was a living, breathing thing with a will of her own. Like the crew, which seemed these days to follow his orders only after a subtle inclination of Jade’s head. Nothing that he had thought of as his was his own. And Jade—Jade. He had been careful. He had been careless. He had never dreamed he’d grow to feel anything for the boy. He had never dreamed the boy wouldn’t feel it back. He could tell, somehow—could sense—that the thing within him that grew, unfurling in his breast, with Jade’s mark stamped on it did not unfurl in tandem across Jade’s own heart. It wasn’t that Jade didn’t love him. He had seen Jade’s love on his face every day for months now, and made a study of ignoring it. He had seen that love fill Jade’s eyes and spill onto his cheeks when he had made a gift of the theorbo. He had seen that love and fled from it, fearful of feeling it himself. And now—now that it thrummed reverberating in his chest like the chords Jade fingered carelessly across the theorbo’s neck—now what?

He filled his lungs with wind and cried out. “Now what?” he bellowed, surprised at the strength in his voice even at this terrifying height—surprised at the strength in himself. Had he truly thought himself bereft of it, the strength that made him man? How but with strength had he climbed so high, to the top of the world, in search of counsel most men thought madness? Love was a softness, yes, but perhaps not a weakness.

The wind wound around his body sensuously, like a whisper, and he gave himself up to the power of it, to belief in it. Mad Hunter had fallen, but the wind had not. It still needed a prophet. It still needed someone to carry its messages and act on its whim. “I can be that man!” Adam yelled out, but the wind—so strong up here—whipped the words back down his throat. He got the sense that he couldn’t give himself to the wind, not if he wasn’t even able to give himself to Jade. “But what if he won’t take me?” Adam asked, only half-aware of the question. There was no answer.

And that, Adam thought, was an answer. Surprised at how soothed his ragged nerves felt, even as he was tossed perilously by the wind, he steeled himself for the descent. He still couldn’t say if the wind Hunter had spoken to was a real thing or madness—still couldn’t say if anything had met him at the top of the shroud, or if he had only been a fool at a great height alone with his thoughts.

And then the captain froze in his descent. They were sailing into—into he didn’t know what. Great billows of fog had swirled up around the ship, miring them in confusion, where there had been none even a moment before. It didn’t feel right. There was something else in the fog. There was something else out there. It wasn’t just waiting—it was coming for them.

_Death_ , hissed the wind over his skin. Adam’s skin broke out into gooseflesh. He had imagined it. Surely he had imagined it. But they sailed into the fog nonetheless, and he scurried down the rigging with his heart in his throat, and all his skin tingled, and again something whispered in his bones. _Death_ , it said. _Death_.

 

 

 

First, there was fog. Then there was chaos.

With the fog came a sudden chill and an eerie silence. It was not just that it muffled the sounds of the ship and crew as it enveloped them with swift totality, white chill mist obscuring the horizon where there had been open sea but moments before. More than absorbing their sounds, the fog seemed to steal them away: the wind, so favorable moments ago, ceased snapping the sails. The very breath was stolen from the lips of the crew, their words with it. The _Hawk_ creaked mournfully into the thick silence, surrounded on all sides by white nothing. A chill passed over Jade’s skin and he stood a moment, frozen in place, before springing into action.

Unless the wind itself had betrayed them, filling their sails and dragging them into this trap, there was only one man to blame. Wherever the freak weather had sprung from, whether they had been charted too close to a mist-shrouded isle or led into some grim den of unnatural magicks, the sort from boyhood tales, Jade decided to hold Blackheart personally responsible. While the other men were still frozen shock-still and crossing themselves, Jade began barking orders. “Tie down the sails!” he commanded. No use drifting into rocks or shallows whilst they were blind. “Get the fog lamps lit!” he called to another cluster of immobile crewmen. To Oarless he directed, “Up to the crow’s nest, now—see how deep this fog is. And you—” he sighted on Blackheart at last. The man wandered about the deck with a dazed look on his face, apparently deep in the sort of psychotic trance Jade had come to expect from him.

“Where did this come from?” Jade demanded crisply, wondering where the captain was at and why it fell to him to get things sorted.

“It’s a mystery,” Blackheart said in a soft voice, still gazing about at the impassive shroud of white. Jade had been a sailor long enough to know bad omens when he saw them. This was no ordinary fog. He hoped the crew did not suddenly find themselves a superstitious lot. He wondered, too, what Mad Hunter might have lent to the situation, were he alive to ask the wind.

“Can we row back out of it? Could you guide us true?” Jade asked next, not hopeful.

“Not with any kind of certainty,” Blackheart said vaguely. Jade wanted to throttle him.

“All right, then, navigator,” Jade said crisply, voice a plain challenge. He had no patience for Blackheart just now, in the middle of a crisis. He could be murderous and unhelpful later. “What _are_ you good for?”

“Shore ain’t far,” Blackheart said dreamily, uselessly. “There’s a cove somewhere hereabouts, by the map.”

“And why are _we_ here?” Jade went on. “We’re meant to be—”

“En route to Santiago, aye,” Blackheart said. His eyes blazed to life and he seemed to have come back to reality, to their situation. Jade felt, in the pit of his stomach, how helpless they were, shrouded in this unnatural fog. There ought to be nothing to fear, but something in Blackheart’s tone set his skin to prickling. “We’ve gone off course a bit. Dreadful sorry. We’re but a few leagues from the mainland. Plans have… changed.” Blackheart’s eyes locked to his and his voice changed, a hissing urgency coming over it while, like sinkholes, his eyes pulled Jade in, in, and down. “I just want you to know,” Blackheart said, voice going ragged with fearful excitement. “Whatever happens, darling, I want you to know. I did this. I did this to you. I did this—” Blackheart’s voice was rising into a frenetic, exuberant howl. Before Jade, narrow-eyed, could ask what exactly he meant, the _Hawk_ lurched. Shuddered. And then there was a sound like the heavens exploding. Cannons blasts rocked the ship, tearing through her hull and throwing Jade sideways with the force. One whizzed just over their heads to blast apart the mast, filling the air with splinters and sound. Jade scarcely had time to fling himself to the deck, dragging Blackheart with him, before the first screams of the wounded rang out. And then there were shapes whizzing through the fog—men. Boots dropped to the deck all around. Jade leapt to his feet again, sword drawn. They had been boarded.

And that’s when the chaos began.

Jade did not need to lunge or thrust; his first kill ran headlong onto his blade, spearing himself and spilling his own guts. The fog still hung heavy, and so Jade did not look too closely, not wanting to know if it was an enemy or an ally whose life he had just taken. He slid his sword out of the man and, studying his belt buckle instead of his face, rammed the point of the blade into the man’s heart. Friend or enemy, it would be quick. Not so for his second kill: this time Jade chose a target from the melee already blossoming across the deck, making sure he did not recognize the man’s face before he swept his blade out, low to the ground, and severed the man’s hamstring with a quick, neat cut. It was a crippling wound, and far from a painless one, but he would have counted the man disarmed and let him live had he not fumbled screaming at his waist for his pistol. Jade dropped to one knee quickly, using his dagger to pin the man’s hand to the deck. He kicked the pistol away as he rose, and left the man there, stabbed and screaming.

The chaos had grown up around him. Now instead of dazed men fumbling for weapons, the crew was made up of dead men and fighting men. There was no in between. The attackers swarmed out of the fog ceaselessly, appearing a numberless host, and Jade was knocked off his feet as another cannon blast set the deck to shuddering. Whoever fired upon them was just as blind as they, in this fog, and did not care if the boarding party lived or died. Imbued with that chilling knowledge, Jade regained his feet and rushed headlong at the nearest enemy. He yelled as he charged, giving the man time enough to whirl to face him and raise his axe before Jade landed a glancing blow at his hip. The man lurched with the wound, deep where it split the skin but not a killing blow, and Jade spun on one foot, bringing his sword in a great swinging arc that that landed in the man’s ribcage on the other side. The man howled as Jade tried to jerk his sword free; though the pain must have been unbearable, there was adrenaline to match, and the man took the opportunity to hack at Jade with his axe. Jade dodged as best he could, one swipe of the axe coming close enough to tear his sleeve, until at last his blade pulled free. The motion brought forth another howl from his combatant, and Jade twisted the sword as he slid it from the man’s side, widening the rent. He steadied himself and prepared to thrust again when the skin along his back began to prickle, then burn as if afire. He ducked instinctively, his body somehow knowing what his brain did not, and the sword meant to end his life arced harmlessly over his head. The second attacker roared and drove again with his sword, as if to stab Jade while he crouched, and the axe from the first slammed into the deck scant inches from Jade’s toes. He half-rolled away and leapt to his feet, prepared to face two enemies and finding instead a ring around him, men bloody and wheezing and well-armed. He could not fight so many. It was not possible to fight so many. He was only a man. Still, he had chosen this life and he had chosen this death: he would not surrender. He would die fighting. Around him, the melee raged on, but the odds were against them. Beneath his feet the _Hawk_ continued to lurch sickeningly, and by the way the cannons were skidding he knew she was listing badly, maybe even sinking. Jade raised his sword and roared.

“Seize him!” a voice cried, a familiar voice. “No one kills him but me!” Although Jade swirled with his sword, cutting and slashing and stabbing, the men were too many, a hydra: two more appearing for each one he cut away. He was overwhelmed. His sword was taken, his arms pinned. He was held down on the deck, thrashing and bucking and digging into the deck with his kicking feet, to no avail. The men in front of him parted and Blackheart stepped through, spitting at his feet. “You’re mine now,” Blackheart said, lips splitting wide in a foul grin.

 

 

 

He was fury. He was wrath. Like Odin, he stepped down from the hanging tree one-eyed and fearsome, warped and changed beyond mere manhood by the things he’d given all to see. An eye lost was an eye opened. He stood, face half-man and half-meat, empty socket a red dry worm-hole, terrible to look upon and looking upon terrible things. He was rage.

The new eye—the third one—perceived those things as had once been invisible. Like the sight itself, there were things twined through unseen—leylines banding earth and ocean both. He also saw the wind. It was not as it had been before. Once, the wind had called to him, rustling over his skin and issuing prophecies and demands at its pleasure. Now, he called the wind, holding it within his breast alongside his every breath, and it took less than a thought to command it. Easier than reaching out with a hand was reaching out with the wind. It had found and filled the sails of the _Hawk_ and swept her effortlessly into the Morgan’s trap, and at merest suggestion it had brought down the fog and blotted out the earth in mayhem.

Mad Hunter, they called him. From his first day at sea he had felt the call of the wind, and men had looked in his eyes and called him mad; but he had not yet tasted madness. He knew it now: it was the price of knowledge, that selfsame beast that writhed beneath the skin of his third eye, smeared with ash. The wind surged in his lungs, strong and roiling, and he exhaled hurricanes and madness. He was not a man, anymore: he was the wind. To know godhood was to know death, and he knew his. It loomed up ahead of him, nearer now than ever before, but he did not fear it. Why should he? It was the destiny he had been promised. He would not shy from it now. Besides—death was the fear of lesser men. It would not hold the wind.

He had gone mad two days past, in Henry Morgan’s cabin. Mad with hunger, mad with thirst, mad with horror—and then the madness had broken and something crisp and clear had washed him, over and through, and he was—changed. He had called the wind down, then, in a rage, not meaning to, not knowing—Morgan’s cabin had been destroyed by the explosion of it, furniture shredded and the man thrown back into the wall, his wig torn from his scalp. With a sound like a thunderclap still air was replaced by a whirling tempest, devouring, and like a rag doll Morgan flew, cracking his head against the wood paneling only moments before the wood, too, cracked and splintered. Hunter stood untouched in the eye of the maelstrom, watching with a kind of dispassionate terror as the world around him was unmade. He could feel the wind roaring away inside him, could feel it smashing its way through Morgan’s pretty trinkets and possessions, but he could not feel how to stop it. He tried, feeling for the edges of the thing, but each time he brushed against it it surged away, out of his reach. In this way the storm grew wider, spreading brutally across the ship and then into the sea, which began to bellow and churn. When the wind hit the water it sang inside him, joyous, and still the storm grew, beyond his limit, beyond his control.

It might have raged eternal and ended them all, had he not overstretched himself, new to power, and dropped like a stone into un-being. He fell to the cabin floor, unconscious, nose trickling blood. They at least knew better than to try and bind him: when he awoke he was stretched on the deck, crewmen giving him a wide berth. The sun baked into him, and at first he opened only one eye, squinting. He knew not who or where he was. He had dull and distant memories, buffeted about in his throbbing skull, but they seemed far off from both his self and the truth: when the other eye opened, lazily and softly humming, things became clear again. He still could not say with earthly certainty the who or the where, but knowing the what and why of it had served him just as well. He spent that day feeling out currents and flicking about gusts. At sunset, he drew enough water into the air to kick up a fine mist, set afire by the blazing light. The sun slipped below the lip of the earth and died, and last of its light bleeding away, leaving the diaphanous mist damp and cold. The sun set like a breath leaving him, but he was not blinded by the darkness. Far from it: the shorter his vision grew, the further he could reach with the peculiar new wind-sense. In the dark, he felt unto coastal bluffs, feeling the headwinds surge and break over land. He could feel the fingers of the wind reaching further than his mind could grasp, to the edges of continents he’d never set foot to and, larger, the weather growing and changing in the atmos all around him. If he plucked out his other eye, he thought, he might well feel the winds of the entire hemisphere—the entire globe.

That night Morgan made his demand again, a look on his face like no man would dare refuse him. But Hunter knew the truth of things Morgan could not fathom, and so did not wish to refuse. Morgan asked for the _Hawk_ and, knowing the path of destiny, Hunter called her. He reached out with the wind and filled her sails, compelling her to motion. He drew her towards his heart as a compass needle is drawn to the north. The ship he had named home for nigh on two decades he called for, using the voice of death, and she answered.

When the _Hawk_ drew upon them, the fog he had conjured stole the sight of her. The last time he watched her sail he did it through the eye of the wind while staring out at white blankness. For all that, she was no less glorious. Not the biggest of ships, nor the grandest, she made a fine sight nonetheless, blue sails crackling proudly as the bow sliced cleanly through white-tipped waves.

The _Starswept_ did not meet her with the same admiration. Instead, Morgan’s ship sent out a juddering volley of black powder and cannon shot. Hunter looked away with his first and third eyes from the resultant explosion of splinter and flame, but when the time came to board her he was first among Morgan’s men. The moment his boots left the deck of the _Starswept_ he was free: destiny coursed in his veins, and his every whim was fated. So imbued, he swung onto the _Hawk_ with a song on his lips, drawing a sword in one hand and a pistol in another, and calling up concentrated bursts of gale winds that he spun against men still trying to gain the deck. A wise man would have chained the prisoner he woke the wind in, Hunter thought sagely as he swept the head off the first mate’s shoulders. The man had time enough to touch the deck with his toes and look surprised before Hunter lopped his head off and sent him back over the side. Morgan wanted the _Hawk_. He would not have her.

 

 

 

Prone. Helpless. _His_.

Blackheart advanced on the merchant with such torrid glee that he laughed aloud, quite unable to stop it. How long had he waited? The merchant thrashed, struggling. How long had he wanted this? It felt like always. He had always been hungry. He had always starved for this moment. There was no escaping, now. Jade was his.

“You evil fucking bastard!” Jade spat, mouth wet with spittle but no less lovely for it. As Blackheart approached he kicked his legs out, surely tearing his half-healed stab wound with the convulsive movement, but Blackheart was too quick. He sidestepped Jade’s flailing boot easily. It wasn’t as if Jade could kick him to death. It was obvious to all that it was already over. Still, Blackheart liked that he fought. It was always better when they fought. “You betrayed us!” Jade was yelling, but Blackheart was mesmerized by the shape of his lips, not the words coming out of them. He knelt down on the deck gently, straddling Jade’s bucking hips. He was not heavy enough to prevent Jade’s flailing, but the movement excited him, so he didn’t instruct one of Morgan’s men to club his head, knock him unconscious. Similarly, he was enjoying Jade’s shouts, which mingled beautifully into the cacophony, and did not ask that his mouth be bound.

Blackheart caught Jade by the jaw and stared down into his panicked eyes. It had been a mistake, he realized, to stab this man in the back. It was his eyes—his eyes. They flashed amber and unstoppable in the warped light of the fog lamps, the fear in them palpable, resolution and strength winding sinuously through the beauty of them. What kind of fool would kill such a man only to miss the look in his eyes as the life left them? Blackheart grinned hugely as Jade jerked his chin free and snapped his teeth viciously, not doubting that a slower man would have lost a finger. That Jade would do such a thing, would out of desperation seek to hurt him however he could, would bite his flesh and break it—ah. Had anything ever delighted him more?

Blackheart stroked his fingers down the front of Jade’s shirt, wet with sweat and stinking of fear. It was a fine fabric, light but strong, the color rich and suiting Jade well. Yes: this, as all things, was fitting. It was as it should be. It was at it must be. Blackheart bunched the shirt in his hands, luxuriating in the feel of it, and tore, ripping it open down the middle and baring Jade’s chest. His ribs were visible through his breast, the skin thin there, and Blackheart let his fingers wander absent-mindedly across the collarbone. When he touched on Jade’s nipple the man let out a shout and convulsed so desperately as to nearly dislodge Blackheart. For a brief, adrenaline-charged moment, Jade’s left arm came free; it shot out desperately for Blackheart’s throat, claw-like. The man responsible for holding it down threw the whole of his weight on top of Jade’s arm, pinning it under his knee with a harmonious crack. Jade cried out at that, too. Blackheart smiled, imagining it to be painful.

Still, didn’t want to risk Jade getting free again. There was work to be done, and Blackheart wanted him awake for it. He concluded the sweep of his hand over Jade’s chest and fished his favorite knife out of his belt, showing merry teeth, and studied the tip of it with great interest. “I killed them, you know,” he said. He had hoped to sound casual, but found that his voice was raspy with his own excitement, his breath coming quick. “Your friends Alteza and Gutierrez. They screamed for me. You will too.” Jade thrashed again, but there was less power in it this time. He was tiring himself out. Blackheart couldn’t help but feel disappointed. He’d hoped it would last longer, for both their sakes. “And then, at the height of your vainglorious battle, where did I find myself but on Henry Morgan’s ship? In Henry Morgan’s confidence? Made him a deal, I did.”

By now Jade’s damnations and indictments of him were little more than string of curses, foul words twisting that pretty mouth. This pleased Blackheart too. “Traded him one soothsayin’ madman for our lives, see? And I swore I’d lead the _Hawk_ here, where he could take his pleasurable time with Carson, uninterrupted by the Spanish navy.” Jade screamed out a fresh curse, hardly cogent anymore. “I wasn’t going to betray him,” Blackheart said, finding the words torpid on his tongue. The effect, once they hit the air, was one of sadness. He liked this less, but seemed unable to stop speaking. Whether he wanted to tell it or not, his story was part of this. This _was_ his story. He couldn’t unwind the strands, tangled so. “Not my captain. Not him.”

Reaching the next part of the narrative, rage flared up in Blackheart, fueled by the look of softness that had momentarily clouded the hate in Jade’s pretty eyes. He loosed a pistol from his bandolier and hit Jade across the face with it, gratified by the immediate red that bloomed there. Blackheart found that he wanted to lick it up, and did. “But then he let you live,” Blackheart went on, mouth very close to Jade’s ear, whispering. “Then he let you live, and I had no choice. I had to lead you here.”

Jade jerked his head as if he would bite out Blackheart’s throat, but was too slow, too groggy and pained from the pistol’s blow. Blackheart rocked back on Jade’s hips, pulling himself back out of reach. “They’ll kill him,” Jade snarled, eyes holding now only pain and spite. Delicious, thought Blackheart. “Because of you he’ll die. Because of you we’ll all die. But it’s worse than that, Davey. It’s worse.” Something in Blackheart’s chest seized at the name and he lifted the pistol to strike again, but didn’t, not wanting to ruin the lovely bleeding lips, the crooked teeth. “It’s worse because you love him,” Jade went on. “I didn’t see it before. I didn’t understand why—” Blackheart no longer cared about Jade’s mouth and bashed the pistol into again—once, twice, and raised it for a third blow when Jade’s head lolled back sickly and he stopped himself. Anything to stop him talking. Anything to stop him saying those things—

To a point. Anything, to a point. Wasn’t any fun if he was unconscious. Well—less fun, anyway. Blackheart lifted his head by the hair. Jade coughed and spluttered on blood, spitting it into Blackheart’s face, and his eyes swam, but he held on to consciousness. A fighter. “Got Morgan’s word he’ll live,” Blackheart said, though the time for talking had passed. “Whatever they do to him, Morgan swore to me he’ll live.” Jade said nothing, only stared, eyes fierce with hate and dull with pain at once. Best to do it now, then, while he still felt it—before his bleeding mouth, crunched arm, cut face, cracked jaw took away the notion of pain and left him empty.

So Blackheart laid the tip of his knife on Jade’s chest, right in the center. “This is so he knows,” Blackheart whispered, not to Jade or to himself or to anybody. “This is so he knows who did this to you. When he finds you… what’s left of you…” Blackheart lifted his eyes to meet Jade’s own, then hissed out, “ _I want him to know_.”

And then he drove the edge of the blade into Jade’s chest. The motion was deceptive—Jade arched his back and started screaming before he knew how deep the blade would—and would not—go, and so Davey was treated to his death-scream while he yet lived. Because he did not bury the knife into Jade’s chest. No, he merely pressed it, parting the skin, digging as deep as he dared without nicking anything vital. Like an instrument, he thought: snap a single string and the whole thing’s useless. When Jade realized he wasn’t murdered, not yet, the scream grew louder, because the pain was worse this way than if it had been quick. Blackheart was slow and patient with the knife, making sure he carved it deep enough, making sure the lines were neat. He’d meant it—he wanted his captain to know, when he saw the mark. Bloodless Jade, he thought, nearly laughing. The blood pooled up out of Jade’s chest, covering both of them in hot slickness. He sure as hell was bleeding. Where was the crew to see it now?

Blackheart was only half finished with his work when the screaming stopped. He looked up immediately, surprised Jade had passed out so quickly; but he hadn’t. His teeth were gritted together, his jaw clenched, and his eyes on fire. He was staring right at Davey—right into him. He was watching. Blackheart was impressed in spite of himself. It was a much harder thing to stop screaming than to start. He went back to his work, and Jade’s body jerked in response to the pain, but a sound did not pass his lips—not until Davey was almost done. As he finished the line, joining it to his point of origin, sopping away blood with his sleeve to even make out where that was, Jade began to shout again. But when Davey looked up to meet his eyes, Jade was looking over his shoulder with a wilder look than Davey had ever seen on any man, living or dying or dead. “You’ll kill him!” Jade was screaming, thrashing harder than before. Blackheart dropped the knife to the deck and grabbed Jade’s waist, trying to hold on. Blackheart twisted, trying to see back over his shoulder, and something jolted through his chest. It was the sight of Carson, bound hand and foot and mouth, bloody and hardly able to struggle. It was Morgan, sword drawn, laughing—it was Carson, hog-tied and sure to drown, going over the edge.

No. It wasn’t that. What had jolted through his chest, Davey realized a moment later, was a bullet. He touched his hand to the spreading hole and looked down at the blood there, surprised to find it gushing red. So he had a heart after all, Davey thought numbly, from far away. And then there came pain.

And then there came nothing.

End Notes:

Tune in next week for the grand finale, rapscallions and scallywags! Thank you for taking the time to read. Let me know what you think!

  
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680>  



	16. Providence by scarredsodeep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this last and latest installment of the adventures of Captain Carson and crew! I don't own AFI and the following events never transpired, but it has been an honor to share this swashbuckling joyride with you all.

  
[Providence](http://afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680) by [scarredsodeep](http://afislash.com/viewuser.php?uid=389)  


  
Summary: It's seduction, betrayal, and above all adventure on the high seas as the charming Captain Carson and his nefarious crew return! Set a year after the events of Honored to be Plundered, in this full-length long-awaited second installment of their tale, Captain Carson, his first mate Blackheart Havok, Mad Hunter and the merchant's son Jade will assail an unassailable port, discover uncharted seas, fight an unwinnable war, take on one of the fiercest privateers in the Spanish Main, and--of course--get into plenty of swashbuckling shenanigans along the way.  
Categories: [Jadam](http://afislash.com/browse.php?type=categories&catid=6) Characters:  None  
Genres:  Action, Adventure, Alt. Universe, Romance  
Warnings:  None  
Challenges:  
Series: None  
Chapters:  16 Completed: Yes   
Word count: 80688 Read: 2074  
Published: 04/29/2011 Updated: 08/10/2011 

Chapter 16 by scarredsodeep

Author's Notes:

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this last and latest installment of the adventures of Captain Carson and crew! I don't own AFI and the following events never transpired, but it has been an honor to share this swashbuckling joyride with you all.

He didn’t see Mad Hunter land upon the deck and didn’t see him sweep across it in a blaze of fire and fury, but he did see the bloody, one-eyed ghost of his friend and first mate where it stood, in the _Hawk_ ’s center, with a wide swath around him of stillness. Though the ship rocked with explosions, wood bursting and flame sprawling, and men screamed and bled and died all around them, it was silent and still and cool where the shade of Mad Hunter stood, a stinging wall of wind around him. The pain was enough that—enough that Jade believed, without hesitating, that his dead friend was not dead. That his dead friend had come back to life. That his dead friend wielded the wind as easily as another man might wield a fencing steel. All this he believed in a heartbeat, in that hairsbreadth second between the old pain and the new one as Blackheart, crouched like a cat above him, moved the knife, carving. Mad Hunter met his eyes and smiled, as much as a ghost can smile, and lined up his shot. Jade’s glazed gaze drifted, detaching from this perplexing sight, and saw something new, something that took him away from even such a thing as vast and insurmountable and all-consuming as pain.

It was Adam. It was his captain, trussed up like a pig, struggling fruitlessly against ropes that bound his ankles and wrists, shouting soundlessly and choking on a gag. He had been overwhelmed quickly, it seemed: as Jade watched, Henry Morgan himself, wig askew, bludgeoned Carson’s skull with the butt of his pistol. The captain slumped unconscious from the blow, and the little chance of survival he had had dropped down to none. No matter what Blackheart had been promised, no matter what Blackheart had believed—they were killing him. The privateer was killing him. As Jade watched, the captain’s limp, bound body was hefted by two of Morgan’s goons. Morgan grinned foully as the body went over the rail, falling endlessly to its watery grave below. Jade was aware that he was screaming, with both volume and violence, but didn’t know what. Blackheart withdrew from his bladed ministrations and twisted, stricken by the sight of Adam falling, his pale neck stretching bare and vulnerable. One great lurch, one powerful jerk, and Jade could sink his teeth into that flesh, tear out that white throat, and spill Davey’s hot red heartbeat.

Before he could, a shot rang out. It was indistinguishable from all the other shots. It was no more or less pronounced, or portentous, or piercing a peal than any of the other cracks and bursts and screams that made up the world around him, and so Jade did not hear it when Hunter’s bullet left the gun. He heard it when it slammed into Blackheart’s body, though; he heard it when it buried itself in the flesh, when it burrowed through, when it exploded out the other side and whizzed, too fast to see, just over Jade’s prone form and deep into the wood of the broken mast behind him. He heard the thick wet sound of death and did not have to look between Blackheart’s fingers to see the great gaping hole in the man’s chest, the exit wound, bigger than both his fists pressed together. Davey looked down at his hands, brilliant red, and said nothing.

_Oh Davey_ , Jade might have thought. _I always loved you._ Or: _I’m so sorry_. He might even have whispered something—might have kissed the man’s forehead, brushed away the sweat-stuck hair, eased the cooling flesh into the ever-after with a kindness, with a memory. Fondness and passion and all manner of things had passed between them, once, and Jade might have repaid that fire with fire—might have whispered a blessing and a goodbye. He might even have shed a tear over the bloody remains of his one-time lover’s body, the hole blasted in it big enough to see through.

Jade did not.

Instead, he kicked out fiercely with his legs and what remained of his strength. Blackheart, dying, fell from him like a rag doll, and Jade kicked him square in the blasted-open chest, even where he lay with no light left in his eyes. His boot landed sickly, wetly, in the soft open flesh, and Jade spat at the corpse with the bitterest of hatred. Blackheart Havok was dead, and it pained him not at all. He was glad to be the one to watch the bastard die.

As Mad Hunter bore down upon them, Morgan’s men, charged with pinning Jade, broke and scattered. Distantly, Jade wondered why: was he such a fearsome sight? But the funnels of wind around him shredded men and ship alike, carelessly, effortlessly, and he wondered if he ought to run from it too. Before he could decide Mad Hunter was upon him with a mad grin, kicking Blackheart’s tangled dead legs free of Jade’s own and helping Jade to his feet. By the feeling of it, his right arm was broken, or near enough; he wouldn’t be much a swordsman in the fight still raging around them. And Carson. Jade’s stomach dropped at the thought, even as Hunter embraced him. When Hunter pulled away, Jade saw his white shirt was soaked solid with blood, forming the seeping shape of a heart. Hunter looked down and, seeing the mark, cackled.

“Reckon they’ll be calling you Red Heart, now,” Mad Hunter told him, and the words broke a spell. The strange stillness around him broke open and he heard sounds again; his chest throbbed with anger and pain, oh, pain. His heart beat out his blood in a slick over his chest and, looking down at himself, Jade saw what Blackheart had carved. Huge and bleeding, scrawled in the middle of Jade’s chest, was the outline of a heart—not black, but red. Red. Jade touched the edges of the wound wonderingly, unable to comprehend the scar this torture would turn into, if he lived long enough to see it heal.

“I thought you were dead!” Jade said at last, looking at his friend, who was considerably changed since they’d last met. Half of Hunter’s face was a ruin: there had been a gash running from his brow to his cheek, and it had been left open to fester and rot. Now, where his eye had been, there was black, putrid flesh and a shrivel of an eyelid, and an emptiness. Unable to look upon it, Jade looked instead into the glittering eye that remained. A crude circle of ash was painted in the center of Hunter’s forehead, and he seemed to crackle with madness, with lightning.

“I was,” Hunter said. “I am. That is to say… it’s an honor, Captain, to fight at your side. But destiny—”

“To hell with destiny,” Jade said fiercely, finding somewhere within his tortured chest a peal of laughter. “All else is lost, friend: we fight now for glory.”

Hunter shook his head at this. “Not all else,” he said, seizing Jade by the good arm and dragging him over to the rail. He pointed into the churning water below, at a floating corpse among the others, this one not yet a corpse: the captain. “Go now,” Hunter hissed. Jade couldn’t tell if it was the sick, final lurch of the sinking _Hawk_ struck by another volley of the cannons or if Hunter truly pushed him, but it didn’t matter: he went over.

The fall was long, and bracing, but Jade hit the water badly nonetheless, using his hurt arm as a blade to part the froth he fell through. The water slammed into him from all sides and he was filled with panic; it spun him blindly, stealing the air from his lungs, at once freezing his flesh and setting fire to his fresh wound. The salt flooded the deep rents in his chest and he screamed, gulping water. He did not know which way was up, which way was air—he was sure to drown. But even as he thought it his head broke the surface and air scorched his throat. He retched seawater into the churning red tide and steadied himself as best he was able. The arm did not seem broken after all: he could move it to keep himself afloat, though not without a fair amount of agony. The water, bitterly cold to match the uncanny fog and rich with salt, went a small way to soothe the pain in his arm and his battered face, though onto the gaping mark carved into his chest it brought only anguish. Jade had no further time to spare for taking inventory of his injuries. He could move and, with luck, the cold of the water would slow the bleeding before it had the chance to kill him—it was no small amount of blood he was losing, spreading like red ink into the sea, a widening bloom around him. Kicking hard to keep his head above the spray, Jade scrubbed salt from his eyes and peered through the fog. He despaired of finding Carson, for it was thick as soup, and he swam into debris from the ship and floating corpses alike without ever seeing them. Only moments into his search he was hopelessly disoriented. He tried to swim in widening circles around the spot where Carson must have fallen, but his own plunge and pain and this wicked fog had taken all sense from him. Still, he swam, searching, until the ache in his legs and lungs and breast had grown too great, and the next piece of debris he came across he clung to, laying down his head and letting the salt sting his eyes and nose and mouth. He had lost him. He had lost Adam.

Jade dangled from his piece of the _Hawk_ and let the tide take him. He drifted away from the sounds of battle, from the wreckage of his ship and the corpses of his crew, the bright pitch flames that cast twisted shadows in the fog. He closed his eyes, the sea washing over his eyelids and leaving a crust of salt in his lashes, and wondered if he might not breathe deeply of the waters that had so long borne him and sleep. He was terribly weary.

When his bit of ship bumped up against something, though, he jolted into alertness immediately, eyes flying open and head snapping up. It was simply not in his nature to drown himself to sleep; there was nothing could be done for it. And upon opening his eyes, Jade was glad of it—incredibly glad, impossibly glad. He had collided with another chunk of flotsam with a corpse draped across it—a corpse, bound hand and foot and mouth, that breathed. The chest rose and fell, however belabored, and the torn shirt neck bared an inked breast, the true north of a compass-rose heart.

Jade’s strength returned to him all at once, not faltering, and he pushed off from what was left of his ship and surged to the side of what remained of his captain. He brushed his lips across Carson’s forehead, finding it cool, and the man’s eyes fluttered weakly. Jade worked the knot of Carson’s gag, the man coughing up blood and sea as soon as his mouth was freed. He gasped air hungrily, and it was a welcome sight—his strength was in him still. Jade twisted at the ropes that bound Carson’s wrists, to no avail. The rope was as wet and tight as his fingers were soft and clumsy. Both must needs be a great deal drier before he’d be of any use.

“Can you swim?” Jade asked hoarsely. For all the things he’d planned to say if fate granted him even another moment at Carson’s side, ‘can you swim’ did not number among them. But no other words came to Jade’s lips, and it was a prudent question. In answer, Carson’s head lolled. He was not quite conscious. Jade reckoned he’d gone under, and for too long. It was luck alone that had brought him back to the surface at all. In any event, it was obvious at a glance that Carson could only thrash his bound legs as means of propulsion, ill-equipped to keep his own head above the water. Jade scanned the horizon, remembering what Blackheart had said, a lifetime ago. Shore’s not far off, hadn’t he said? And only a few leagues to the mainland. Jade could swim a few leagues, if he had to, but he was hurt and bleeding and had Carson to wrangle besides, so it was the spit of coveland they’d swim for. If only he could see more than an arm’s length in any direction, Jade thought angrily—and no sooner had thought it than the fog began to lift. Perhaps it was a trick of the eye, but it seemed that they’d reached the end of it. Jade seized Carson with one arm and kicked, swimming in the direction they’d been drifting. Sure enough, when he looked back the way they’d come, he faced an impassable wall of fog, thick and blind and plainly unnatural. When he put the fog to his back and surveyed all other sides, kicking hard to keep both himself and the unconscious captain afloat, it was sunny and clear. Jade followed the pull of the current that had carried them out of the fog, feeling it for what it was: the tide. He wasn’t too long swimming through warming water, limbs aching as he took great pains to keep Carson’s face clear of the waves, before he saw it: land.

Jade could see the shapes of docks and platforms, made by sailors finding Santiago’s ports too full, or fees too high. These structures were, for the time, abandoned, though it seemed likely to him that the _Starswept_ had docked there not too long before, laying in wait. It was the other buildings that gave him pause, or might have: not much more than huts, a handful of dwellings crouching in the shade of great cliffs, squatting beside sandy patches of tilled earth and great green stalks of sugarcane. True that it was no great city, no true port: not much more than an uncharted dribble of sand, like the islet had been. But this was inhabited land, that his father had forbade him ever to set foot on again so long as his perversions persevered, lest he dishonor the family. Jade had been five years at sea mindful of this sentence, finding it just—Jade had been five years at sea, dreaming of shore and civilization, daring to stand only where no other man had.

But he didn’t waste a thought on his father now. He kicked with all the strength he had left, pulling hard with his free arm, the good one, dragging at Carson with the other. They made the shore in no time. Gasping and exhausted and nothing but grateful, Jade Puget collapsed on inhabited land, his captain beside him.

 

 

 

Adam choked and spit sour water, waking to a hammer blow coming down on his chest. His eyes flew open as the hammer came down again and, seeing the fuzzy shape of two clasped fists raising above him, the first rasping word on his lips was “Yield!”, followed by an equally croaky repetition of “I yield”. Jade’s face resolved in the space the fists had been, rather more bruised and haggard than Adam remembered it but glowing nonetheless.

“You weren’t breathing,” Jade accused, not without tenderness. Now that the world was clarifying around him, Adam was noticing some things. For one, the weak and weary slump to Jade’s body, even as it curled over him protectively. For another, the disturbing stillness of the ship, as if no wave licked her sides at all, as if no wind had ever existed, as if he were not on a ship at all. And—was that _sand_ he felt on the skin of his arms?

His senses returned slowly, his recollections with them. The reason his wrists and ankles burned, the reason he was coughing seawater, the reason for the eerie stillness of the ship… Adam scrambled into a sitting position, butting up against what felt alarmingly more like a palm trunk than the mast typically did. “The _Hawk_ ,” he spluttered, remembering. “Morgan! We have to—we must—” Adam’s outburst foundered as he looked around himself. He remembered the fog dropping out of nowhere, yes, and the thunderous battery of cannons, and the _Starswept_ falling upon them like—like—

He remembered, too, how quickly his men had been overpowered and overwhelmed. He remembered watching them falling, cut down one after the next—the way even as he leapt down from the shroud his feet had tangled in the purplish ropes spilling from Oarless’ gut, the man screeching, his last words lost in the roar of battle all around them. He remembered seeing Jade felled—held down by two hulking monsters while a third man, small and dark, leapt on him with a knife. And though he’d drawn his sword, he remembered it hanging limp at his side as he stared around himself in horror—and he seemed to remember Morgan, bearing down upon him with a terrible laugh. And he had raised his blade to swing, too late, and as quickly as that it had been over. He remembered struggling pointlessly while they bound him, hand and foot and mouth, and he remembered Blackheart’s blade in Jade’s chest, and he remembered going over.

He didn’t remember much after that. The wild panic of drowning, thrashing desperately towards what he hoped was the surface, the sounds of death all around him. He didn’t remember coming up for air. Maybe he hadn’t.

Adam turned a critical eye to the bright cheery sunlight all around them, the glowing white sand and the mesmerizing, slow-motion crash of wave on shore, the sweet repetition of a tide that erased everything, that would reduce the greatest of men and mountains down to sand, sooner or later. And Jade was there, beside him and, for the moment at least, content to be so. He hadn’t thought it would hurt so much, being dead, though he couldn’t now imagine why he thought it would be any less painful than life. But dead he surely was—dead, or dreaming. How else did a lost battle and a drowning turn into a sunny paradise?

No. Not quite a paradise. He looked at Jade again. His jaw was puffy and swollen and near-black with bruises, his left eye socket colored purple with a bruise of its own, the eye runny and red with blood. The closer Adam looked, the more wounds he saw. And—Jade bared his teeth and hissed sharply at the pain, but Adam could not stop his fingers from tracing its ragged red edge—the worst of it. The great red heart carved into his once-flawless skin. No amount of healing would erase that mark, and looking at it now, it was hard to imagine it would ever heal at all.

“The battle is lost,” Jade said at length, gently pushing aside Adam’s curious touch and instead twining their fingers together. “The _Hawk_ is surely sunk, and the crew…” Jade trailed off, a different kind of pain showing on his face now. He shook his head, closing down the raw emotion that had shown and replacing it with grim regret. Adam understood the look: it was that of a survivor. If what he said was true, if the _Hawk_ was truly gone—but no. Jade had been right to turn away from the feeling. The grief for his ship and his fine men upon it was too much. To feel it was to be devoured by it. He must needs push it away, if he were to survive.

“Havok betrayed me,” Adam said, instead of facing the monstrous burden of loss. He said it matter-of-factly, not deceiving himself in this, not for a moment doubting its truth, but Jade shook his head, a peculiar look to him.

“I don’t think he did,” Jade said. “The rest of us, the ship herself—these he betrayed of a surety. But I think that… I think that, to Blackheart, what he did was loyalty—to you. You weren’t meant to be hurt, you see… I suppose that’s why Morgan didn’t kill you outright. Blackheart made him swear he wouldn’t kill you.” Jade seemed to lose himself in the thought of it for a moment or two. “No,” he said at last, lifting his eyes to meet Adam’s. “Everything he did, he did for love of you.”

Adam stared at Jade as if searching for evidence of a head wound. “He betrayed me,” Adam said again, this time with venom.

Jade shrugged, still looking a little far away. “That may be,” he said, but it didn’t seem as if he were agreeing. “He always was a man difficult to read.”

“You knew him,” Adam said. It had never occurred to him before, but they had come from the same place, hadn’t they? He had never been to Villaña himself, but that was reason enough to suspect it was not a big port. Why should they not have met before each ended up on the _Hawk_ for his own reasons?

Jade nodded. “Once,” he said lightly, giving another little shrug of his shoulders and wincing at the way it pulled his wrenched arm. “Never well.”

Adam leaned back against his palm tree, wondering what came next. No _Hawk_. No crew. Neither of them, it seemed, was a captain now. He could hardly remember why it had seemed worth fighting over—a title on a ship that no longer existed. Why would he put his love to death over such a thing? Only now was it clear to him how small a threat Jade had been. Or rather—how large one, had he cared to find himself standing opposite Adam. But he had demonstrated, time and again, his willingness and longing to stand beside.

Adam wouldn’t make such a mistake again. In fact—there were many mistakes he’d not make again.

“When we get off this rock,” Adam started.

“When we find another ship, you mean,” Jade corrected. Adam was a little surprised at that. If Jade had said there would be no more ships, there would be no more captains and no more sea—well—he didn’t know, truly, if it was a promise he could keep, but he would have made it gladly, and tried to bury the salt in his blood forever, had Jade asked it. It wasn’t until Jade did not that Adam realized how worried he’d been. He felt a surge of unexpected gratitude that, of all men, it was _this man_ in his heart, in his life. Adam laughed aloud, squeezing Jade’s hand.

“All right, then, _mi ijada_. When we find a ship,” he said happily. “I’ll even let you be mate this time.”

Jade raised a bruised eyebrow at that. “Mate, is it?” he echoed. “I seem to recall your last crew deciding they preferred me for captain.”

“Mate and you’ll be glad for that much, mutineer,” Adam shot back brusquely, trying to hide his smile.

“Oh, very well,” Jade acceded breezily. “And your bullheaded revenge campaign? Will that be continuing?”

“Aye,” Adam said, more serious by half. “Til one of us is dead. You understand it?”

“I do,” Jade said with a very real sigh. “But let me help you this time. It won’t do if you get yourself killed. I don’t fancy inheriting your grudges.”

Careful of Jade’s jaw, Adam slid a hand to the man’s face, cupping it gently, and brought their lips together. He kissed Jade lightly, and Jade returned it with more gusto, only to yelp and pull away from the pain it caused. A compromise, Jade rested his forehead on Adam’s shoulder, wiggling his body closer. “Jade, I…” he began, and then faltered.

“You bloody idiot,” Jade said, laughing. He didn’t take his head away, though, and Adam was absurdly glad of it. “You think I don’t know?”

“And you…?” Adam pressed, not able to let go quite as easily.

Jade lifted Adam’s hand to his lips and kissed it, more careful of his jaw this time. “Of course I do, Captain. With all my heart.”

 

 

 

The battle raged on around him, the wind howling, but Hunter was not a part of it, not really. Destiny had cupped him in her palm for one undying moment, and then he had slipped through her fingers, both of them fulfilled—both his captains saved, or as near they could be, each by the other, and Blackheart crumpled and still and dead at last, at last, at his feet. Hunter knew what it meant, when destiny left him, when Blackheart’s blood and breath ceased their ebb: the _Hawk_ was his. Hunter let out a great, booming laugh at the thought—the ship his own, and him the wind, and flung wide the horizon.

The _Hawk_ sunk lower in the water, groaning. Like rats, Morgan’s men were beginning to abandon ship. Salt and sea lapped at Hunter’s ankles as it submerged the deck. When he was cut down from behind, he dropped to his knees beside Blackheart’s body, which had begun to float. Hunter pressed his hands to his belly, where they came away hot and red. Boots splashed in the water around him, living men leaving the dead as they fled the ship. Able hands found ropes and footholds, climbing and swinging to safety. The _Hawk_ was going under.

The ship’s broken body sank, just as Hunter’s did, but in truth neither fell: they rose. As the last black and bloody pair of boots left her deck, Hunter cupped the _Hawk_ in the hand of the wind and lifted them both. Together, they rose to crest atop the waves. Hunter got to his feet, smiling grimly. Riddled with ruin, the _Hawk_ was not seaworthy, could not even hoist a mainsail, though the fore- and mizzenmasts boasted sheer golden sails, misty about the edges. He would have to carry her. “Bring her about!” he called to the helmsman. John Oarless it was, with a crisp nod and salute. “Aye, Captain!” Oarless cried back sharply. With much groaning and cracking the _Hawk_ rose from the depths, gushing seawater, and Oarless swirled the tiller as another stepped up to man the boom—Briscoe. Hunter looked across his deck proudly, men rising from the water all across it and hurrying to their work. He watched close, though, and saw that Blackheart stayed down. He had no place on a ship with a heading such as this.

Mad Hunter, the name and the face and the hand of the wind, stood upon the pale grey deck of his pale grey ship, and shouted orders to his dead crew, each as broken and bloodstained as he, not that that mattered here. On his command the _Hawk_ wheeled about for a new horizon, pale and grey and beautiful. Hunter leapt nimbly to the rigging, climbing for a better view, and yelled out his orders. North and east and onward, they sailed away into the mist.

End Notes:

The End

Thank you all for reading, reviewing, and enjoying this story. I couldn't have done it without you! I hope to see you again soon.

  
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

This story archived at <http://www.afislash.com/viewstory.php?sid=8680>  



End file.
